Optinet2019 Optical Network Conference was held in Beijing on June 12th. Wei Leping, director of China Telecom Science and Technology Commission, explained in the opening speech the opportunity of 5G era optical communication: Global 5G has entered the critical period of commercial use, and will give fiber optics and optical modules. WDM optical devices will bring new opportunities.

Global 5G has entered the commercial critical period
Wei said that the significance of this year's conference is not the same as in previous years, and the 5G license was issued. Commercial deployment of the three major operators is estimated to be pre-commercial in 2019: 40+ cities, 800,000 to 100,000 macro stations; commercial scale in 2020: hundreds of cities, 600,000 to 800,000 macro stations; 2021~ Large-scale commercialization in 2027: Focus on cities and counties and developed townships, and realize millions of macro stations and tens of millions of small base stations. It is also worth mentioning that Wei believes that although the radio and television licenses are obtained, it is not possible to build an independent network. It is necessary to find other operators to cooperate.

Fiber Opportunity in the 5G Era
Wei said that the 5G pre-transmission fiber direct drive method is currently the most mature solution, so fiber heat will become the first beneficiary.

According to the existing 5G to consider the 3.5GHz frequency band, due to the high frequency band and poor coverage, it is 9dB worse than the 1.8GHz frequency band in the 4G era. Considering that China is a large fiber broadband country, the optical fiber broadband deployment volume and penetration rate have reached the leading level, 4G. The density of base stations is already very high. The urban area is 200-500 meters. It is expected that the number of 5G base stations will be twice that of 4G, and the amount of optical fibers will be at least twice the amount of 4G, with at least several hundred million core kilometers. Adding non-technical and irrational competition in the Chinese market may result in actual usage exceeding expectations. The demand for single-mode fiber for pre-transmission will usher in an opportunity.

 

Optical Module Opportunity in the 5G Era
The substantial growth of 5G base stations will make optical modules the second largest beneficiary. The number of 5G base stations is twice that of 4G base stations, and the base stations are considered by three sectors. The network architecture is based on large concentration, small concentration, and not concentrated. Next, it is expected that the entire 5G network will bring at least tens of millions of orders of 25G/50/100Gbps high-speed optical modules.

Further consider the huge development space generated by the current inversion of data centers in China (currently, the United States accounts for 45% of IDCs, China's broadband users are three times that of the United States, but China's IDCs account for only 8%), and the development space of high-speed optical modules More impressive.
   
Based on PAM4, the current mainstream technology solution has a baud rate of only 50%. It is expected to reduce the bandwidth requirement and use low-cost components to enhance the dispersion tolerance and achieve 20 ps at 400 ps/nm. There are also many challenges and opportunities for key device price/performance ratios, and the AWG will become the main device.

High capacity and cost considerations: opportunities for high-speed access network systems
The huge capacity and new architecture of 5G bring new development opportunities and cost pressure to the bearer network, so the high-speed access network system is the third beneficiary. As the new 5G architecture expands the backhaul/forward capacity by several tens of times, reaching tens of hundreds of Gbps, it is necessary to introduce passive WDM based on 25G/50Gbps, active WDM OTN/M-OTN, SPN, WDM PON, Tunable lasers, high-speed optical modules and WDMs are in great demand, but are price sensitive. At the same time, the new 5G architecture needs to introduce the F1exE interface to support network slicing; introduce EVPN and SR simplified control protocols, and enhance flexible scheduling capabilities; and introduce SDN architecture to implement automatic service delivery and flexible adjustment.

Finally, Wei summarized that 5G will also promote the capacity upgrade of the metropolitan area network and the backbone network. In the metropolitan area network, the traffic of 5G will gradually approach the fixed network traffic; in the backbone network, the proportion of 5G traffic will also be greatly increased; the optical network and IP network need to be greatly expanded and upgraded, and the all-optical network 2.0 welcomes new opportunity.