Wednesday, 3 June 2020

NEC's 5G Antenna-equipped Smart Street Lighting to be Trialled in Tokyo

Smart poles and lamp posts are popular topic in this blog. You will find links of many examples at the bottom of this post. NEC has a Smart Street Lighting solution that is designed with smart cities in mind. You can read more about it here.

In a recent press release, it announced: 

Sumitomo Corporation has concluded an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on the preliminary/trial installation and verification of smart poles being carried out by the government. Together with NEC Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation intends to install two types of smart poles in the Nishi-shinjuku area of Tokyo by the end of June 2020.

In its "TOKYO Data Highway Basic Strategy" formulated in August 2019, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government calls for constructing an ultra-high-speed mobile Internet network in Tokyo. As part of that effort, the government is looking to install smart poles at an early date in the Nishi-shinjuku area, a priority improvement zone. Smart poles are multi-functional poles equipped with communication base stations, Wi-Fi, street lighting, signage, etc., and they are expected to serve as infrastructure useful for the provision of new community services.


In partnering with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Sumitomo Corporation and NEC will be installing two types of smart poles in the Nishi-shinjuku area by the end of June 2020 to verify their utility under both ordinary and emergency circumstances. More specifically, the two companies plan to install two models of NEC's "Smart Street Lighting" equipped with functions such as digital signage and pedestrian traffic flow analysis cameras; one model will be outfitted with a 5G shared antenna system for joint use by multiple telecommunications carriers, while the other, a site-sharing model, will be equipped with 5G base stations for multiple telecommunications carriers. With the aim of bringing 5G shared antenna systems into full-scale use by March 2021, efforts will be made to extend these systems across the entire metropolis and to help develop services for Tokyo residents/visitors through the construction of efficient infrastructure by accumulating knowledge on the installation and operation of smart poles.

 Sumitomo Corporation is engaged in a variety of information and telecommunications endeavors, being involved with the cable television business in Japan and investing in telecommunications and telecommunication tower businesses overseas. In the 5G sector, it has taken part in 5G base station sharing verification projects alongside Tokyu Corporation, Osaka Metro Co., Ltd., and Tokyo's Minato Ward. In addition to advancing the "TOKYO Data Highway Basic Strategy" through this latest agreement, Sumitomo Corporation will in the future be collaborating with companies, local governments and others to create 5G-related businesses.

 NEC has positioned the public safety business as an engine for its global growth, and this verification project will accelerate and enhance the development of solutions and services to realize "NEC Safer Cities", while helping to create safer and more secure streets.

A concept video explaining how NEC's Smart Street Lighting will be used in future cities as follows:




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Thursday, 28 May 2020

Drivers and Enablers for Large Scale Small Cell Deployments

In the Cambridge Wireless Smart Cities & Small Cell seminar last year, Andrew Entwistle from New Street Research talked about "Small cells around the world: an analyst’s perspective". His presentation is embedded below (with permission). What I wanted to share with you was this one slide (pic above) looking at the drivers and enablers for a large-scale small cell deployment.

Interesting to see that even though there is a lot of potential for outdoor small cells in Europe, the enablers are not there, thereby making it difficult for a large-scale small cell deployment. 

With regards to the USA, I have posted about their small cells deployments many times. The thing is that the definition for small cell in the USA includes small form factor. So a small site with RRH would be considered a small cell. Anyway, check out these posts here and here.

Presentation as follows:



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Tuesday, 12 May 2020

Passive and Active Infrastructure Sharing

I have written about Network sharing before here. In that particular tutorial, my main focus was to explain Active Infrastructure / Network Sharing mainly. So the focus was on two most common approaches, MORAN and MOCN. The Passive Infrastructure / Network Sharing can be a bit involved as well depending on the agreement between the different parties. Here, let's focus on this.


Quoting from the GSMA whitepaper:

Passive infrastructure sharing is where non-electronic infrastructure at a cell site, such as power supply and management system, and physical elements such backhaul transport networks are shared. This form can be further classified into site sharing, where physical sites of base stations are shared and shared backhaul, where transport networks from radio controller to base stations are shared. Passive infrastructure sharing is the simplest and can be implemented per sites, which enables operators to easily share sites and maintain their strategic competitiveness depending on the sites shared. Operation is also easier with this form of sharing because network equipment remains separated. However, the cost-saving potential of sharing is limited relative to other forms of sharing.

 Active infrastructure sharing is sharing of electronic infrastructure of the network including radio access network (consists of antennas/transceivers, base station, backhaul networks and controllers) and core network (servers and core network functionalities). This form can be further classified into MORAN (Multi-Operator Radio Access Network), where radio access networks are shared and dedicated spectrum is used by each sharing operator, MOCN (Multi-Operator Core Network), where radio access networks and spectrum are shared, and core network sharing, where servers and core network functionalities are shared.

 As in the case of site sharing, MORAN and MOCN can be implemented per sites and enables strategic differentiation. However, operation of network equipment needs to be shared (or at least issues must be shared with participants) and therefore increases the complexity of sharing relative to site sharing. The cost-saving potential is greater than site sharing. Core network enables greater cost-saving potential but is complicated to operate and to maintain strategic differentiation. It is important to note that core network sharing has not been popular and only a few cases have been suspected to be so.

The pros and cons for different sharing types can be seen in the table above.

This old presentation from 2014, explains the pros and cons of the two passive sharing approach nicely


Passive sharing: Site + tower sharing

  • What is shared?
    • Cell site
    • Shelters, towers
    • Power, A/C
    • Security for buildings and systems
  • Potential advantages
    • Cost sharing for site acquisition, infrastructure, lease, maintenance, power
    • Reduced network footprint
  • Potential drawbacks
    • Entrants may not benefit if they lacks own sites to offer
    • Costly to negotiate and implement when established networks are being consolidated


 Passive sharing: Backhaul

  • What is shared?
    • All elements of site sharing
    • Backhaul links: cables/fiber, leased lines, microwave
  • Advantages
    • Cost savings in equipment cost
    • Cost saving in deployment
      • Joint-digging of trenches (70-80% of costs)
      • Microwave links – reduced license fees
    • Faster deployment timeframe


The presentation has examples from different parts of the world and also pros and cons of active sharing. Check it out here.

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Monday, 4 May 2020

Samsung's 5G NR Integrated Radio for mmWave spectrum

At MWC LA last year, Samsung Electronics announced its new 5G New Radio (NR) Access Unit (AU) supporting 28GHz spectrum. This new AU brought together a radio, antenna and digital unit into one compact box, making it according to them, the industry’s first 3GPP compliant integrated radio for mmWave spectrum.


According to Samsung, by integrating these RU-DU technologies with 1,024 antenna elements for mmWave spectrum into one compact box, the new AU can be more easily installed on streetlight poles and building walls, providing operators a faster, simplified way to build out 5G networks.

The AU is also able to deliver an capacity of 10Gbps throughput, enabling operators to deliver higher 5G NR speeds to more users. Additionally, improved cost-efficiency is achieved by eliminating the need for ‘fronthaul’ fiber connections, thanks to the AU’s integration of the digital unit.

This video explains it nicely.



In addition, Samsung recently also announced that it has achieved the industry’s fastest 5G speeds in a lab demonstration that combined 800MHz of mmWave spectrum with MU-MIMO (Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) technology, running on their AU.


According to their press release:

Using two test mobile devices, the demonstration achieved approximately 4.3Gbps speeds on each, reaching an industry peak speed of 8.5Gbps across both devices. In order to achieve the speed, two key technologies were used: carrier aggregation and MU-MIMO.

 This demonstration highlights the key difference of 5G – its use of mmWave spectrum. The wide bandwidth from mmWave spectrum enables mobile operators to provide multi-gigabit speeds that lower band spectrums are unable to match. With multi-gigabit speeds, users can experience transformational 5G mobile services. Mobile operators will be able to deliver new and rich services such as 8K video streaming, AR remote learning and holistic VR teleconferencing as well as new use cases that are yet to be imagined.


Finally, this Tweet by Samsung Network shows how the AU uses an ultra-quiet convection cooling design that lowers operating costs and environmental noise.

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Monday, 27 April 2020

Huawei's 5G Book RRUs Start Delivering On Their Promises

We have blogged about Huawei's Book RRUs last year here. Now, Huawei and China Telecom Shenzhen (a.k.a. Telecom Shenzhen) have taken the lead in achieving the global ultra-large scale 3D networking that involves macro and pole base stations in China. Hundreds of 5G C-Band (3.4 - 4.2 GHz) Book RRUs were used to help the operator deliver an undifferentiated experience in 5G-covered areas.

Huawei announced in a press release:

Book RRU is an innovative product that is small in size, lightweight, and easy to deploy. This offers an effective approach of addressing challenges associated with insufficient site resources. 5G Book RRUs enable significant improvements in 5G in-depth coverage and user experience in residential areas while increasing network capacity.

 In-depth coverage in residential areas, urban villages, upscale communities, and backstreet alleys is a long-standing challenge which has faced operators. Insufficient resources and difficult acquisition lead to difficult and time-consuming site deployment.

 Lightweight 5G Book RRUs enable quick 5G deployment in residential areas by using walls, lamp poles, monitoring poles, and electricity poles as sites. This offers a quick solution to achieving quick deployment, helping eliminate coverage holes and offload network traffic.

 In December 2019, China Telecom Shenzhen completed the deployment and verification of the first 5G Book RRU. 4T4R 5G Book RRUs were used in the project.

 After the recent 5G Book RRU deployment, tests show showed that the downlink speed exceeds 1.2Gbps on commercial mobile devices (Mate30 Pro) when the network spectrum is 100 MHz. With Book RRU deployment, coverage holes 150 to 200 m away from streets are eliminated and indoor in-depth coverage of low-rise buildings standing 50 m to 100 m above the ground is achieved.

 This places the operator in a unique position to meet the capacity requirements in value hotspots in Shenzhen, such as school campuses, office buildings, business districts, and scenic parks. Book RRUs supplement macro base stations with in-depth coverage and hotspot capacity absorption. This improves user experience and releases suppressed traffic while also increasing ROI.

 Shenzhen Telecom is the pioneer of digital construction. Under the overall construction plan of the new infrastructure construction China Telecom Shenzhen will continue to collaborate with Huawei to complete quick 3D networking based on 5G standalone (SA) technologies through combined deployment of macro, pole, and indoor products, enabling optimal user experience while securing 5G leadership.
Picture Source: Susan Welsh de Grimaldo

Last year, Huawei gave a tour to analysts in Zurich, Switzerland to show their kit on Sunrise's network. This tweet from analyst Kester Mann, shows two examples of Book RRU deployments for Sunrise network in 3.7 GHz spectrum with local coverage up to 200 metres and speeds recorded above 700 Mbps with 9 milliseconds of latency.




With operators have to provide dense coverage to meet the 5G expectations, we won't be surprised to see more products like these in the near future.

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Monday, 20 April 2020

SuperMicro's 5G Pole-Mounted DU Server Solution

Back in December 2019, Supermicro launched Server Class Edge Systems for Open 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) Solutions. These new SuperServers offer O-RAN Open-Platform Software, Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, GPUs, FPGA and IP65-rated protective enclosures for Pole-Mounted Cell Tower Deployments. The solutions for 5G cell tower deployments leverage fully-configurable SuperServers based on 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Xeon D processors, O-RAN compliant partner software, and ability to operate in harsh environments. These capabilities accelerate the mobile network evolution from proprietary hardware/software to open source software and disaggregated hardware for 5G installations.


The press release states:

“Supermicro’s data center customers and global telecommunication operators are asking for non-proprietary disaggregated hardware and software 5G solutions supporting multi-vendor web-scale networks, said Charles Liang, president, and CEO of Supermicro. “Supermicro’s new SuperServer solutions provide the 5G network infrastructure with maximum deployment flexibility and efficient total cost of ownership (TCO).”

 Supermicro’s two new systems are its first servers for 5G, the Intelligent Edge, and other embedded applications to be based on 2nd Gen Intel Xeon processors. The E403-9P-FN2T is built for demanding environments and includes three PCI-E slots for GPU and FPGA accelerator cards. The compact 1U 1019P-FHN2T is well-suited for controlled environments such as micro data centers and re-purposed central office locations and features two full-height full-length PCI-E slots.

 With these expansion slots, Supermicro can provide real-time Edge AI inferencing via GPU cards, and accelerate 5G RAN software and open-standard site-to-site communication using the Intel FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card N3000. These new servers complement Supermicro’s successful Intel Xeon D-based 1019D and E403 models. Supermicro is developing IP65-rated protective enclosures to meet the needs of outdoor environments such as cell towers and microcell sites.


5G Physical Layer splits can be seen in the picture above. While 4G used the BBU + RRU/RRH architecture, 5G will have a Central Unit (CU) and a Distributed Unit (DU). A Radio Unit (RU) may be present in some scenarios as well.

The Outdoor Edge Systems page on their website provides more information about the Pole-Mounted IP65 Server Platform for 5G and the Intelligent Edge. We will end with a video that depicts their vision



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Tuesday, 7 April 2020

TIP Webinar on Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT)

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) group is a project group within Telecom Infra Project that works on the definition of open technologies, architectures and interfaces in Optical and IP Networking.

The project is an engineering-focused effort led by major operators, technology vendors and research institutions. It concentrates on different parts of the Transport network architecture, including optical transponders, line systems, IP access devices, open APIs and network simulation and planning tools.


TIP held a public webinar on 25th March with a lot of details about the group and the different projects within the group. The webinar is embedded below:
OOPT Public Webinar March 2020 from Telecom Infra Project on Vimeo.

You can jump to the part that may be of interest to you:

02:20 - Welcome & Introduction to TIP, Attilio Zani (TIP)
12:30 - Introduction to Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) Project Group, Víctor López Álvarez (Telefónica)
23:00 - Disaggregated Cell Site Gateways (DCSG), José Antonio Gómez (Vodafone) & João Gabriel Evangelista Aleixo (TIM Brasil)
41:00 - Disaggregated Optical System (DOS), Johan Hortas (Telia)
45:00 - Cassini Overview, Jeff Catlin (EdgeCore) & José Miguel Guzmán (Whitestack)
1:00:00 - Phoenix Overview, Anders Lindgren (Telia)
1:09:00 - Disaggregated Optical Routers (DOR), Kenji Kumaki (KDDI)
1:17:00 - Physical Simulation Environment (PSE), Gert Grammel (Juniper) & Gabriele Galimberti (Cisco)
1:28:30 - Control, Information Models and APIs (CIMA), Harald Bock (Infinera) & Stephan Neidlinger (ADVA)
1:38:30 - Converged Architectures for Network disaggregated & Integration (CANDI), Oscar González de Dios (Telefónica) & Hirotaka Yoshioka (NTT)
1:52:30 - OOPT NOS – Goldstone, Kingston Selvaraj (PaIC Networks)
2:02:00 - Closing Remarks, Víctor López Álvarez (Telefónica)

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Friday, 3 April 2020

Operator Cloud Infrastructure and Innovation Strategy

When I wrote about Docomo's Open Innovation Cloud, there was some discussion about what exactly is meant by the cloud, whether it has to be public or private (there is hybrid as well) and if service providers (SPs) are embracing it or not.
So before we jump into the mobile operator's strategies, I thought it would be good to do a quick introduction / recap on what is meant by cloud. Embedded below is a slightly long presentation, which goes in some detail but for most people the first 7 minutes is more than enough.



GSMA's 'The 5G Guide' which was produced last year has a lot of valuable information for the operators and everyone else willing to learn from that. Section 3.11 deals with '5G Value Enablers: Operator Cloud'. The key takeaways from that section are:

  • The Operator Cloud will combine the best of both cloud and edge to enable the 5G ‘Service Delivery Model’.
  • Edge computing in 5G networks will be delivered as Multi-access Edge Computing to reduce latency.
  • An Operator Cloud can help operators to save up to 2% of capex by improving operational efficiency and customer experience.
  • If operators can create competitive global platforms for edge/cloud services, this could unlock a new revenue opportunity of up to $100bn.

The GSMA whitepaper details the importance of operator cloud and the case for MEC, which is suited in what scenario. I am not detailing them here except for the final section below:

Value creation and capture with the Operator Cloud is firstly about an ‘infrastructure strategy’

 A common refrain in the industry about the Operator Cloud, edge computing and MEC is that they present a chicken and egg dilemma. Operators seek a robust business case with clearly identified revenue sources and sizes before embarking on the journey to deploy the distributed edge/cloud infrastructure. While this may look like the prudent thing to do, it creates inertia for action and can lead to operators foregoing the opportunity completely.

 An alternative approach is to consider the Operator Cloud, firstly as part of the infrastructure strategy of an operator. Under this approach, the Operator Cloud is progressively rolled out together with 5G network build out. Operators also begin to use it for backhaul relief and to improve the QoE for customers.

 Under this approach, operators can satisfy their own operational and customer experience needs, and then address new opportunities without needing to impose an unachievable ROI hurdle. Figure 3.11.3 shows the contrast between the infrastructure strategy vs. the innovation strategy.

With new 5G services and applications being defined in more mature markets, operators are keeping their options open as to when is the right time to change their strategy from infrastructure centric to innovation centric.


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Monday, 23 March 2020

Docomo 5G Open Innovation Cloud


Earlier, I wrote about how the Japanese operator NTT Docomo is creating a whole new set of innovative 5G applications and use cases with the help of partners. For that purpose they have created the 5G Open Cloud platform. While NTT Docomo is using it to deliver it's own use cases and innovative applications, partners are encouraged to create their own services on top of that too.

In this post I am embedding a talk and the corresponding presentation looking at the challenge of creating this platform and how this is being solved. This presentation is from last year but still has lots of good information and I doubt things would have changed significantly.






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Tuesday, 17 March 2020

LuxTurrim5G smart light pole concept

There is no shortage of concepts to create a truly smart infrastructure for smart cities but this one may be different. LuxTurrim5G is Nokia Bell Labs driven, Finnish publicly funded, Smart City Ecosystem research project innovating & piloting novel digital services and business opportunities for a real smart city enabled by smart 5G light pole network.


Here is a short summary of LuxTurrim5G from their website.

Challenge
Smart cities need digital service infrastructure to improve safety, energy efficiency, air quality, effectivity of transportation and quality of living.

 Approach
  • Develop & demonstrate key technical solutions & concepts based on smart 5G light pole infrastructure with integrated 5G mmW radios, sensors, cameras, info screens & other devices
  • Create an open access ecosystem and platform for digital services. 
  • Build a real life real time outdoor test and demo network at Nokia Espoo Campus to demonstrate new innovations on top of and enabled by 5G small cell infrastructure.
  • Pilot business & service innovations on e.g. navigation, information sharing & advertisement, public safety, weather monitoring and smart lighting.
Key results
Provide breakthrough enablers for a digital smart city ecosystem in street level deployments, by building versatile technology and service platform utilizing a single flexible and fast 5G network enabling data driven services from show case demos through pilots to real implementation

Here is a playlist of videos that provides further insights into the project.




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