5G+: How 5G Change the Society

By Zhengmao Li, Xiaoyun Wang and Tongxu Zhang

This book takes China Mobile's "5G +" plan as the mainline, introduces three major scenarios, nine indicators, system architecture and basic principles of 5G, and systematically explains the essence of China Mobile's "5G +" for the first time. A lot of industry use cases and solutions are introduced for 5G to bring new changes to life, industries, and social governance. This book can benefit all readers who are interested in 5G. It also can be a reference for vertical industry partners to fully understand the possible applications of 5G. Most of all, it will help to promote all industries with new developments based on 5G's new kinetic energy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Aug 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9789811568190

Book preview

Part I5G+: New Platforms, New Strategies, New Opportunities

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

Z. Li et al.5G+https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6819-0_1

1. The Pre-existence of 5G

Zhengmao Li¹  , Xiaoyun Wang²   and Tongxu Zhang³  

(1)

China Telecom Group Co., Ltd, Beijing, China

(2)

China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd, Beijing, China

(3)

China Mobile Research Institute, Beijing, China

Zhengmao Li (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Xiaoyun Wang

Email: [e-mail]

Tongxu Zhang

Email: [e-mail]

Communication is the basic requirement of human beings, and there is a long history of human communication. For thousands of years, people have been using languages, symbols, bells and drums, fireworks, bamboo slips, paper books and other information transmission, and changes in communication methods have profoundly affected human life.

With the emergence of electrical signals, the communication technology has brought about earth-shaking changes to human society. In a sense, electrical signals have replaced flying and running as a transmission medium of information, which means the end of ancient communication methods, and has opened a new chapter in modern communication methods, especially the constantly emerging milestones in the field of mobile communications have also pushed communication technology to a higher level. Therefore, it is necessary to review the development history of mobile communication.

1.1 The First Generation Mobile Communication: Analog Communication—Opening the Mobile Era of Communication

In 1960s, research institutions such as Bell Labs in the United States proposed the concept and theory of mobile cellular systems, which is the theoretical prototype of the first generation of mobile communications.

Subsequently, North America, Europe and Japan started the research and industrialization process of the first generation mobile communication technology at almost the same time, and put it into commercial use successively in the 1980s.

The first generation of mobile communication system mainly adopted the analog technology.

The first-generation mobile communication system had a small capacity. In order to increase the system capacity, a technology called Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) was adopted. FDMA divides the total bandwidth into multiple orthogonal channels, and each user occupies one channel, just as highways are divided into lanes, with each car driving on only one of the assigned lanes.

While the first generation of mobile communication technology brought great success, it was also subject to some of its shortcomings. Because the first generation of mobile communication technology adopts the analog signal transmission, whose capacity is very limited, and generally can only transmit voice signals. There are problems such as low voice quality, signal instability, insufficient coverage, poor security and being vulnerable to interference. In addition, the communication standards of different countries were inconsistent, making the first generation mobile communication unable to global roaming, which greatly hindered the development of the first generation mobile communication technology. Therefore, the second generation of mobile communication technology was on the horizon.

1.2 The Second Generation Mobile Communication: Digital Communication—Shannon Endowed the Beauty of Communication Digital

In order to solve the defects of the first generation mobile communication simulation system, a new technology came into being, namely digital communication technology. This represents the arrival of the second generation of mobile communication with digital communication as its core.

The so-called digital communication is to use the simple 1 and 0 to represent complex information. The ancient beacon communication is actually a simple digital communication. The two states of the beacon (on and off) are 1 and 0, which can be used to communicate whether there is an enemy attack. There is also the Morse telegram code still in use today, which adopts different combinations of dots and strokes to represent different characters and constitute the information to be transmitted. The dots and strokes here can also be considered as the deformation of 1 and 0.

GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) proposed by Europe and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) proposed by the United States are the most representative of the second generation of Mobile communication technology, but CDMA started later than GSM, and as soon as it just came out, it has lost half of the country. Unlike GSM, which is deployed globally, CDMA’s worldwide deployment is mainly concentrated in the US, South Korea and China. Compared with analog communication, digital communication makes up for the technical shortcomings of the analog communication era to a certain extent. First of all, digital signals have the characteristics of strong anti-interference ability and no noise accumulation. The noise interference on the signal can be effectively reduced through appropriate modulation, channel coding and corresponding decision mechanisms. Secondly, the encryption method of digital signals is easier and more flexible, which can more effectively guarantee the security of signal transmission. With the continuous development of hardware technology and the constant improvement and optimization of digital circuits, the volume of terminal equipment in this era has been greatly reduced, and the cost has been further reduced as well.

In order to increase the capacity of the second generation mobile communication system, GSM also adopted a TDMA (Time Division Multiple Address) scheme, and TDMA divided radio frequencies into different time slots and assigned them to different users. Compared with FDMA technology, TDMA has the advantages of high communication quality, good confidentiality and large system capacity, but it must be precisely timed and synchronized to ensure normal communication between mobile terminals and base stations, which is technically more complex.

In the 2G era, voice service and SMS have become mature. SMS makes people’s communication more convenient and more efficient. Once launched, they have been adored by users. At the same time, the smaller and more exquisite mobile phones of the 2G era replaced the popular cellular phones. These mobile phones are not only easy to carry, but also feature-rich. With the addition of MP3 and camera functions, mobile phones are not just communication tools, they greatly enrich people’s lives.

1.3 The Third Generation Mobile Communication: Mobile Interconnection—Starting a New Phase of Mobile Internet

In addition to supporting traditional voice and SMS, the third generation mobile communication technology could also support data transmission and realize the combination of wireless communication and Internet and other multimedia communication. The data transmission rate was generally above a few hundred kbps. 3G mainly has three standards: CDMA2000, WCDMA, and