HUAWEI is Eyeing 5.5G

HUAWEI released its definition for the next evolution of 5G. On top of the eMBB, URLLC and mMTC features in 5G, it promotes further advanced features as:

• UCBC — Uplink Centric to Broadband Communication
• RTBC — Real-Time Broadband Communication
• HCS — Harmonized Communication and Sensing

It is clear shown in the figure, each new advanced feature is a combination of the adjacent two. These are far away from officially adoption, but its 5.5G concept shows HUAWEI’s direction to drive definition of specifications.

The 3 advanced features reveal some clients’ demands during HUAWEI’s POC practices. UCBC is the most practical one, as many early stage use cases are built for industrial use cases such as remote monitoring and remote control. There is a clear demanding for larger uplink bandwidth to support back haul of video streaming.

Telecom companies’ primary 5G use case are in industries with contract value 1.2B USD in China

RTBC would mostly being demand in consumer market only if the MR/VR/AR market is going to reality. HCS lays the foundation for support for IoT connections and positioning features that required by indoor navigation and V2X.

The purpose of this call out of 5.5G is mainly to initiate the discussions for future feature release (probably in R18 and further). The exact definitions and features may change a lot as we moving forward.