with Release 18, the mobile network to its full potential

The 5G is the fastest growing mobile network worldwide. If particular mobile uses are improved thanks to better speeds and shorter latency, the new generation has above all multiple implications in many industries by providing a much more elastic core network operation to cope with many scenarios. of use.

The 5G-Advancedexpected around 2023-2024, must bring this potential even higher by respecting the Release 18 3GPP and nokiaa European telecom equipment manufacturer, explains certain aspects of this.

The Advanced evolution will notably be able to make deeper use of artificial intelligence and machine learning at the heart of the networks for self-maintenance and automatic adaptation according to constraints, while ensuring maximum energy efficiency.

Nokia highlights for 5G-Advanced the vision of the 4Es (Experience, Expansion, Extension, Excellence) which will push the advantages of 5G further:

• Experience : strengthen the possibilities of interactions between humans and machines, allow the deployment of immersive experiences in mixed reality for professional and entertainment needs by merging real and virtual worlds
• Expansion : provide fine positioning (less than 10 cm) indoors and outdoors, manage sets of sensors and large automated networks, improve logistics efficiency
• Extension : create new markets around the IoT, strengthen support with non-terrestrial networks (satellite, for example) and drones to cover white areas, create the operating conditions for autonomous vehicles, autonomous robots and automated industrial systems
• Excellency : optimize the operation of network cores, introduce more widely AI and machine learning in their management, strengthen convergence between wired and wireless networks, optimize resilience and energy efficiency

From this base, Nokia is considering many possibilities brought by 5G and optimized by 5G-Advanced. The fusion of physical and virtual worlds remains a strong subject of new networks and the high speeds and very low latencies will make it possible to create realistic and reactive virtual environments, whether purely virtual or mixed, by providing a layer of information on the physical world, with also the possibility to act remotely as if you were there.

We find here the theme of digital twins (digital twins) which will not be a simple digital representation but a complementary source of information.

5G-Advanced will be able to meet videoconferencing needs even better with uplink speeds improved by 20% compared to 5G, still with short latency.

Nokia also sees a post-smartphone era developing with new types of devices merging several categories but also devices “RedCap” (Reduced Capacity) which on the contrary will only exploit certain specific functions of the 5G ecosystem to meet industrial needs while lowering their costs (video surveillance, quality control, sensors, asset tracking, etc.).

The positioning will be refined until reaching a precision of the order of cm indoors and outdoors and in addition to GNSS systems.

On the infrastructure side, there will be a lot of talk aboutartificial intelligence and training by machine learning, in particular to integrate energy efficiency mechanisms. Data traffic prediction and allocated resources will be at the heart of these efforts to reduce the general energy consumption of the sector.

Finally, Release 18 will make it possible to maintain a stable connection to the network even when changing cell (handover) and antenna, which will be particularly interesting for critical services including those related to autonomous vehicles.