Build 5g microwave back to become a sharp weapon

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From a global perspective, microwave back propagation has become a mainstream way of back propagation.

In 2017, sky light research, a third-party market research institution, published the article "5g retransmission, microwave surpasses expectations". It points out that 50% - 60% of mobile base stations in the world are retransmitted by microwave at present. With the acceleration of 5g deployment, the network capacity, complexity and delay requirements are higher, and the number of mobile base stations will increase. Microwave is an important transmission method in the fiber-free scenario, With the evolution of 5g, it will continue to expand.

Ericsson microwave outlook released in 2018 mentioned that the solution of optical fiber and microwave integration is the mainstream way of 4G evolution and 5g return. By 2023, the 40% base stations will be back to wireless transmission. If China, Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Korea and Japan are excluded, the proportion of wireless backhaul will be as high as 65% by 2023, because there are a large number of 4G base stations in Northeast Asia, and their return depends mainly on optical fiber, which will reduce the proportion of global wireless backhaul.

As mentioned in the report 5g wireless return issued by ETSI in November 2018, wireless return technology has been applied to 50% of base station connections in the world, and it is obvious that wireless return has become an important scheme for 5g rapid deployment and economy.

There are some shortcomings in microwave transmission mode, mainly sight distance transmission, and when there is too much moisture or dust in the air, the quality of microwave signal will be reduced. Of course, this does not affect the share of microwave echo in overseas market.

It can be seen that the 4G era microwave echo is the mainstream echo mode, and the 5g era will continue this mode. However, the inherent characteristics of 5g challenge the microwave return, such as the increase of bandwidth, the scarcity of public frequency band, and the strictness of network experience. Previously, the global microwave return mainly used the 6-42ghz band, with an average return capacity between 50Mbps and 500mbps. Obviously, this is unable to meet the demand of base station return capacity in 5g era. Therefore, E-band begins to appear, i.e. 70ghz-80ghz band.

E-band really provides a strong support for 5g's return. In May 2019, Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson cooperated to achieve 100gbps return rate on the 1.5km E-band microwave link for the first time, which is 10 times of the current commercial microwave return rate and can meet the demand of 5g return.

Huawei occupies the largest share of the microwave transmission market, with a 29% share in the fourth quarter of 2019. Earlier, Ren Zhengfei mentioned in an interview that "there are not many microwave manufacturers in the world, and Huawei is the most advanced", which may be the main reason why Huawei can lead the microwave transmission market.

Because 5g base station needs better return system, the market demand for microwave transmission equipment will reach 17 billion US dollars in the next five years, and only mobile return will drive 70% of the revenue of microwave transmission market, among which the E-band system shipment will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 36% in the next five years.

Opportunities for universal telecommunication service and 5g microwave back transmission

As mentioned above, most of the overseas countries, especially the developed countries, on the one hand, the labor cost is high, on the other hand, the land is private, and the large-scale deployment of optical fiber is very difficult, so the proportion of microwave return is very high. However, China's labor cost is relatively low and the land is public owned, so the difficulty of optical fiber deployment is greatly reduced, forming a large-scale optical fiber laying. Is there no scenario for microwave back propagation in China? It is undeniable that, due to the perfect optical fiber infrastructure, microwave back propagation in China is far from the same trend as that of optical fiber in the same way as overseas, but there are certain application scenarios in which it can still be an important supplement to optical fiber.

(1) The role of wireless backhaul in telecom universal service

As the highest aim of the development of global information and communication industry, universal service has been best implemented in China.

According to the public information, the pilot project of universal telecommunication service was organized and implemented by the Ministry of industry and information technology and the Ministry of finance at the end of 2015. The central financial funds of the first three pilot projects led the investment of basic telecommunication enterprises to exceed 40 billion yuan, and supported the promotion of fiber-optic network access in 130000 administrative villages, including 43000 poverty-stricken villages. The pilot work has greatly improved the broadband network coverage level in rural and remote areas of China.

In June 2018, a new round of Universal Telecom Services was launched. As the "upgraded version" of universal telecom services, the Ministry of industry and information technology officially approved and determined to support 123 cities to implement the construction of 4G base stations in administrative villages, to meet the 4G network coverage needs of 12000 administrative villages, to support 23 cities to implement the construction of 4G base stations in border areas, to support Sansha city in Hainan Province to implement the construction of 4G base stations in islands and other resolutions.

On the basis of basic access to optical fiber networks, the Ministry of industry and information technology and the Ministry of Finance continue to deepen the pilot of universal telecommunication services, support the 4G network coverage in rural and remote areas, and strive to achieve the 4G network coverage rate in administrative villages of more than 98% by 2020.

The 4G coverage of administrative villages is more than 98%, which is an impossible task for other countries in the world. At the same time of 4G coverage, optical fiber coverage is also realized in most areas. However, in the harsh environment like cliff village at the beginning of this paper, microwave back transmission is the best way to achieve the purpose of universal telecommunication service quickly and cheaply.

With the development of 5g, universal service will expand to 5g coverage in a few years. Maybe microwave echo will play its role again at that time, sending 5g services to a large number of remote areas and sparsely populated areas.

(2) Microwave echo in industry service

5g enables thousands of lines and hundreds of industries. In many industry application scenarios, especially where the optical fiber infrastructure is not perfect, microwave return can quickly and cheaply build 5g network environment for industry customers without waiting for optical fiber laying. For example, some video return scenes, including public security monitoring, power transmission and distribution monitoring, oil and gas production monitoring and other scenes, can be directly transmitted by microwave if they are in remote areas.

Take Huawei's airflash 5g enterprise microwave solution as an example, which has been implemented in security, subway, power and oil fields. In Zhoukou, Henan Province, through point-to-point microwave access to the video station, the safe city video system can be put into operation quickly; in Shenzhen Metro, the vehicle mounted 5g wireless monitoring video can be uploaded quickly through microwave mode, providing support for intelligent inspection and customer service; in Qinling UHV transmission monitoring application, the monitoring system can be provided with unmanned area visual information return through microwave scheme.

Finally, again, in the domestic environment, microwave back transmission can not replace fiber as the mainstream back transmission mode, but it does provide a low-cost and effective means for the rapid opening of 5g network and broadband network. 5g's commercial use is not only the 4G bandwidth upgrade, but also the emergence of more innovative formats, which may put forward more requirements for microwave echo.