The Next Generation Mobile Communication Research Has Started Worldwide

What challenges?
How about status quo?
What are our opportunities?
What strategies should we adopt?

Wu Hequan, the vice president of Chinese Academy of Engineering and chairman of FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM, said:
"Research on the next generation mobile communication needs to walk a new way."

by Liu Chunhui

While 3G technology has been continuously developed in recent years, countries around the world have invested more and more in the research on the next generation mobile communication system. In China's medium-and-long term program of scientific and technological development, the research on the next generation broadband mobile communication system is also listed as one of the 16 important special projects. Then what are the new challenges in the course of the research? What is the significance and opportunities for China to enhance the research? And what strategies should we adopt in the research? With the above questions, we interviewed Academician Wu Hequan, the vice president of Chinese Academy of Engineering and chairman of FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM.

The core challenge for the research on the world's next generation mobile communication system is how to further improve the utilization ratio of the spectrum. There's no unambiguous consensus on the technological development.

Regarding the future development of the mobile communication, Academician Wu said, "Compared to the network exchange technology, the roadmap for the mobile communication development is relatively clear, and there is no great difference in the public opinions on the division of the generations of the mobile communication. However, with the popularization of mobile communication, people are paying more and more attention to the brand new experience that mobile communication will bring. Now people start to consider more about such question: what new experience will the development of mobile communication bring to the users? It is believed that the application of the mobile communication will extend further in the future. Besides the "mobile" capability, the feature of "individuation" of mobile communication will be applied more, like positioning, ID management and etc.. In addition, the combination of mobile communication with the Internet and radio will all become new trends for the development of mobile communication. It can also be forecasted that mobile communication will combine and mutually complement with WLAN and MAN. Mobile communication can be realized not only between men, but also between men and machines, and will be applied in wireless networks.

Academician Wu said that the new demands on mobile communication also bring new challenges to the development of mobile communication technology. The spectrum utilization ratio should be further improved to meet the increasing demands on broadband and application, though there are more and more difficulties. For example, many more tough problems in transmission will emerge when we provide mobile communication service on a higher spectrum. There will be more technical problems to overcome, which urges people to take great efforts to develop the new generation mobile communication system.

According to Academician Wu, people will face many challenges in the development of the next generation mobile communication system. First, how to combine the next generation Internet with the next generation mobile communication? Some foreign coutries have started this certain researches, such as the American GENI Program, which aims at supporting mobile communication in the next generation Internet. Second, how to improve the adaptability of mobile network? The current mobile communication actually depends on the mobile terminals while the network is fixed. In the future, people will face the challenge of mobile network devices such as sensors and routers. More technical problems must be solved in order to realize the "mobile network". Third, how to solve the security problem of mobile communication? When mobile communication is combined with the Internet, the solution adopted by the fixed networks cannot be copied to deal with the security problems, because the diversity, isomerism, ubiquity, and miniaturizaiton with low power rate of mobile terminals require a solution that fits mobile communication. Fourth, how to deal with the challenges from the asymmetrical services? FDD is usually applied in the traditional mobile networks, which has weakness when dealing with the asymmetrical services. Now TDD standards have emerged in the third generation mobile communication. However, the FDD is currently separated from TDD. How to combine them and to better meet various application requirements will be the problem that the next generation mobile communication should figure out.

To overcome the challenges above, Academician Wu said the essential way is to improve the spectrum utilization ratio. Therefore, all diplex techniques will be combined in the development of mobile communication. For example, TD-SCDMA is the combination of TDMA and CDMA. There will be SDMA if MIMO technology is applied in the future mobile communication.

Speaking of the status quo of the research on the next generation mobile communication, Academician Wu said, "At present, although much research on B3G and 4G standards has been carried out, there is still no clear description for the technology. It’s still unknown what technology can bring the current hardware and software into full operation. In a word, there are disputes in people's views on future mobile communication technologies aas well as the maturity degree of technology. Moreover, the reason for the disputes lies in that fact that people do not wish a great change in the future networks but expect the current capacity of the networks to continue to play its role and the new technology to have certain backward compatibility. This is also the challenge that the development of the next generation mobile communication is going to face."

It is significant for China to actively carry through the research on the next generation mobile communication. We should seize the opportunity and achieve a greater success than that of the 3G mobile communication.

Regarding the significance of the research on the next generation mobile communication, Academician Wu said that China had its particular requirements on the development of mobile communication. First, China has a large population. Such a high density of population in big cities can seldom be seen in foreign countries. If we take the diffusion rate of mobile communication as 70 percent, there will be 120,000 mobile communication users per square kilometer in the central area of a big city. Second, up to 20% of the mobile phone users apply the mobile Internet function, ranking the 3rd in the world, Which indicates that Chinese users prefer the data function of the mobile phones. Third, Chinese users have special preference to mobile communication. He said mobile communication accounted for nearly a half of the local communication and the long-distance communication is quite close to that of the fixed telephones. Due to the factors above, it is necessary for China to develop a higher spectrum utilization ratio in the mobile communication technologies,and to make great effort to stimulate the research on the next generation mobile communication system.

According to Academician Wu, it is the right time for China to do research on the next generation mobile communication technologies. There is no big gap between China and other foreign countries in the field of communication after many years of efforts, and we even have a relatively good basis in the field of mobile communication." He said that we had proposed TD-SCDMA standard for the research and development of 3G mobile communication technologies, which advocated China’s strength in this aspect. Additionally, we have made a big investment and a good general arrangement in the research and development of mobile communication system in recent years, so that we've got a very great beginning in the research on B3G. Though it's still a long way to reach the international advanced level, we have relatively better technical preparation and experience compared to the moment when we had rushed to participate in the international 3G standardization at the beginning. There's large space for innovation since the concrete technologies for the next generation mobile communication are still undetermined. Therefore, we will have more advantages to achieve bigger breakthroughs in the research and development of the next generation mobile communication if we can seize the opportunity.

The next generation broadband wireless mobile communication project is included as one of the 16 important special projects in the national medium-and-long term program of scientific and technological development, as China has seen the advantages to develop the next generation mobile communication technologies and been aware of the great influences of future mobile communication development on the social and economic life as well as on industry. It is significant for China's economic development. He told us that three aspects of research and development content had been taken into consideration when the project was determined. First, the technologies should be developed further to greatly improve the spectrum utilization ratio of mobile communication system in the future Second, an independent standard of mobile communication should be formed in WLAN and MAN field that can be compatible with the future standards. Third, great breakthroughs are expected in short-distance wireless communication involving sensor networks，extensive networks. Of course, the relevant national executive departments will further discuss the issues concerned and make the detailed plans for the research and development in the future.

Operators should play the leading role in the research on the next generation mobile communication technologies. It is important to maintain the advantageous position in the field of 3G mobile communication.

Regarding what strategies China should adopt in developing the next generation mobile communication system, Wu said that a new way should be explored. There is a new trend around the world that the operators begin to play the leading role in developing new technologies, because the telecom manufacturers are losing their strength and more complicated telecom services are being developed currently. In the past, all the research and development of communication technologies was led by the manufacturers in China. But now it is far from enough if we only depend on the manufacturers to develop technologies, because there are more diverse services and a longer industry chain. Therefore, to develop the next generation mobile communication technologies, the operators should play a more important role so that an independent innovation environment dominated by the operators will be formed, which will offer more advantages to the research and development of the next generation mobile communication technologies.

Academician Wu said, "Operators know the market best. The manufacturers can work in cooperatively as long as the research is led by operators. At present, the manufacturers and the research institutes are inspired by the research and development of the next generation mobile y the operators so that they have more confidence in the research." Wu hopes that operators can take the lead in the development of B3G technologies and the next generation mobile communication standards in China and cooperate with the manufacturers and the research institutes to propose the Chinese standards with independent IPR so that China will become more influential by introducing its own standards to the world. We would hardly obtain a remarkable success in the furious international competition if we couldn't involve the operators in the research on the next generation mobile communication system.

As for the detailed development strategies, Wu said that there's a trend to apply certain relevant 3G+ technologies in the research on the next generation mobile communication technologies, which indicates that people spare no effort to pursue the sustainable technological development. Therefore, China can also adopt such strategies to make full use of our advantages gained in the 3G filed and explore a possible way to make the next generation mobile communication technologies first applied in the evolution of 3G technologies.

It is significant to create a communication platform in order to build up the global influence of FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM.

As the chairman of the FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM, Academician Wu indicated that it was quite necessary to set up the Forum to play a significant role in the research and development of the next generation mobile communication research technologies. The Forum functions as an important platform that can effectively unite the domestic powers and make open and close international communications.

Academician Wu said that the internationalization and self-innovation have been emphasized in the research on the communication standards. During the research and development of the next generation mobile communication system, we adopt an open strategy and are joined by professionals from all over the world, which will help to promote the consensus reached domestically as an international standard.

The Forum is an effective platform to carry out the work, and through which we can cooperate with relevant international organizations. In recent years, non-official organizations have become more active and influential in the international standardization. It can be seen that the non-official organizations cannot be replaced by the official organizations during the process, especially the early stage of the standardization. FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM will actively cooperate with the standardization organizations and industrial alliances both domestically and abroad, and share the advantages with each other.

Academician Wu said that FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM should unite all research institutes and companies in China, function as an open platform, form the joint strength to reduce the differences and save the domestic resources. According to Wu, FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM should do more to organize the operators and manufacturers. In addition, FuTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION FORUM is encouraged to join some international organizations and enhance its global influence by submitting valuable articles internationally.