Reiner Klement, Vice President of Qualcomm: How will “5G+AI+Cloud” transform future industries?

The 2019 International Industrial Internet Innovation and Development Forum was recently held at the second China International Import Expo. The forum was hosted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China, co-organized by the China Industrial Internet Research Institute and the Shanghai Jinqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee, and is one of the seven high-end supporting activities of the second CIIE. At the forum, Reiner Klement, vice president of product management at Qualcomm, delivered a keynote speech entitled "5G Empowers Industrial Internet and Future Industries" and said, "5G+AI+cloud is the foundation for building an era of intelligent cloud connectivity."

▲ Photo: Reiner Klement, Vice President of Product Management at Qualcomm

Reiner said that 5G connectivity needs to take into account a wider range of vertical industry use cases and usage scenarios. "5G + AI + Cloud" can take distributed intelligence to a new level and provide users with a new experience. The new distributed AI ecosystem is very important for both the wireless edge and the terminal side. Qualcomm's end-to-end system-level solution covers terminal-side processing, intelligent perception, and security related to 5G users in order to maximize the potential of 5G.

In addition, Reiner also pointed out that "5G will bring broad prospects for the industrial Internet." He said that the application scenarios of the industrial Internet cover many fields such as manufacturing, container terminals and power plants. According to the IHS "5G Economy" report, by 2035, 5G will empower many industries and generate goods and services worth up to 13.2 trillion US dollars worldwide; among them, for the five major industries closely related to the application of the industrial Internet, such as manufacturing, transportation, construction, public utilities, mining and minerals, 5G will achieve global economic output of more than 5 trillion US dollars in these industries. "It can be seen that 5G has great potential in enabling the industrial Internet."

Speaking of the future, Reiner emphasized that in 2020, Qualcomm will continue to work with ecosystem partners to jointly accelerate the global commercialization of 5G on a large scale: including expanding global network coverage, enhancing the interoperability of sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave bands, and simultaneously promoting the development of independent networking (SA) and non-independent networking (NSA), as well as expanding to enterprise private networks. Innovation based on 5G technology depends on the joint promotion of a wide range of industry partners at different levels. Qualcomm firmly believes that an open ecosystem can bring unlimited potential. Qualcomm will continue to work with all parties in the industry through its end-to-end systems and solutions to maximize the potential of 5G.

The following is the transcript of the speech:

ladies and gentlemen:

Hello everyone!

I am honored to participate in this forum and share my experience here. One year ago, at the 4G/5G Summit held by Qualcomm, we were still imagining and discussing the future of 5G; one year later, 5G has become a reality and is showing more excitement. Next, let's review how the entire industry has developed in the past year.

2019 is a year that the entire industry is eagerly waiting for. This year, countries around the world are actively deploying 5G - operators from the United States, South Korea, Europe, the Middle East and China have launched 5G services, and operators in other regions will also launch 5G services in the coming months. If we compare 5G with the first year of 4G deployment, in the first year of 4G, only four mobile operators and three OEM manufacturers deployed networks and released products; in the first year of 5G, according to the "5G Ecosystem Report August 2019" released by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), 32 countries and regions, 56 operators have announced the deployment of 5G networks, and 41 OEM manufacturers have announced that they have launched or will soon launch 5G terminal devices. As we expected, the global transition from 4G to 5G is much faster than before. This is enough to prove the strong development momentum of 5G and the entire ecosystem, and the terminal ecosystem has also played an important role in the process of 5G deployment.

So far, more than 150 5G terminal products based on Qualcomm's technology and basic inventions have been released or are being designed. Major terminal manufacturers have released or launched 5G terminals, and many models have been shipped. In addition, a large number of manufacturers have announced or launched 5G Wi-Fi devices, 5G modules and 5G CPE devices, all of which are a good start to building a broader 5G ecosystem. As a 5G technology partner, Qualcomm provides technical solutions including RF and modems for these terminals. Here, I sincerely congratulate all ecological partners. Your joint efforts have made 2019 a wonderful year.

In 2020, we hope to continue working with our ecosystem partners to jointly accelerate the global commercialization of 5G in the following areas: expanding global network coverage, enhancing interoperability in frequency bands below 6 GHz and millimeter wave bands, simultaneously advancing the development of standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) networks, and expanding to enterprise private networks.

The combination of 5G and vertical fields will create huge value. In our view, 5G will bring broad growth prospects for the Industrial Internet. The application scenarios of the Industrial Internet cover many fields such as manufacturing, container terminals and power plants. According to the "5G Economy" report of IHS, by 2035, 5G will enable many industries and generate goods and services worth up to 13.2 trillion US dollars worldwide; among them, for the five major industries closely related to the application of the Industrial Internet, such as manufacturing, transportation, construction, public utilities, and mining and minerals, 5G will achieve global economic output of more than 5 trillion US dollars in these industries. It can be seen that 5G has great potential in enabling the Industrial Internet.

Let’s take an example. Once cotton is made into cloth through a series of processes, it is transported to the port and shipped from the port to the world. Today’s digital ports, with the support of sensors, cameras and other terminal devices, make it possible for machines and people to communicate instantly and seamlessly. Specifically, when containers of cloth are loaded into cargo ships, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) can load and unload them within the port area based on automated remote control. Robots work intensively, using technologies such as cloud and 5G NR enterprise private networks to scan, record and match product codes and box numbers through camera sensors. The container can then communicate directly with the destination of the goods and machines and people throughout the supply chain for real-time tracking, delivery and billing. Even the coast guard, customs, police, transportation authorities and other stakeholders can share data, making the port work smarter, safer and more efficient.

Looking ahead to future factories, they will rely on wireless connections of a large number of intelligent terminals to monitor and optimize the production environment. The environment of the factory floor is not conducive to the deployment of wireless connections, and the requirements of different connection types vary. When we focus on low-latency use cases, we can find that 5G's latency can be less than 1 millisecond and data reliability can be as high as 6 9s (i.e. 99.9999%).

Next, I will focus on "5G+AI+Cloud". These three are the foundation for building the era of intelligent cloud connectivity, and can elevate distributed intelligence to a new level, providing users with a new experience. According to the technology roadmap, 5G connectivity needs to fully consider a wider range of vertical industry use cases and usage scenario requirements. The upcoming 5G Release 16 specification version includes Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC). I will also share the importance of these three parts in supporting wireless Internet or massive industrial Internet in my later speech.

On-device AI plays an important role in protecting user privacy in all aspects. Users do not want to store data in the cloud, and for latency and reliability reasons, sensor data needs to be processed in real time on the user's terminal. The processing in the cloud varies depending on the type of operation, including implementing control, ensuring stability, and other operations involved in communicating with other entities.

This new cross-border distributed processing is not only about intelligence, but also about separating content from control, and other processing related to the edge side of the terminal, which we call "edge cloud". Edge cloud can help our partners provide customized services based on the needs of their stakeholders, and can also autonomously provide services to customers and provide edge cloud services to other entities. Manufacturers can also deploy edge clouds to provide market-oriented and context-specific services, private entities such as enterprises or local terminals can also deploy them, or effectively deploy them for enterprise private networks.

Let’s take an example of extended reality (XR) in terms of achieving ultra-low latency for 5G. After being processed in the cloud, it will be sent to the terminal for further processing. We must use distributed intelligence to complete most computing tasks on the edge cloud, and we need the ultra-low latency characteristics of 5G to avoid problems such as “cyber sickness”.

The new distributed AI ecosystem is very important for both the wireless edge and the terminal side. We are working with partners in the mobile phone industry to unleash the potential of 5G. Qualcomm's end-to-end system-level solution covers terminal-side processing, intelligent perception, and security related to 5G users in order to maximize the potential of 5G.

Qualcomm firmly believes that an open ecosystem can bring unlimited potential, because innovation depends on a wide range of industry partners to jointly promote at different levels. Qualcomm works with major cloud service providers and software developers to develop tools and API interfaces, and constantly integrates with their ecosystems. We also work with software developers and independent software vendors to create and optimize a series of AI applications for our customers and end users. On the eve of the 2019 China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Products and Technology Application Exhibition (ChinaJoy 2019), Qualcomm announced a strategic partnership with Tencent Games, and the two parties will jointly optimize in future cooperation projects.

In addition, always-connected PCs will bring new opportunities for future office scenarios, especially when combined with enterprise private networks. We expect users to experience the throughput and connectivity capabilities of 5G PCs as early as next year, even in challenging scenarios. 5G laptops will have extreme performance and battery life, and will be able to support many usage scenarios from laptop terminals.

5G enterprise networks are not limited to checking emails. They will also meet your needs for large or even unlimited capacity, such as real-time collaboration, immersive virtual remote presentation, and instant access to cloud computing. At the same time, 5G enterprise networks will also bring new experiences, including boundless XR, which uses thin and delicate glasses to achieve a lifelike, high-quality immersive experience. As a result, 5G plays an important role in expanding the definition of the future office, which is an exciting opportunity. Mobile operators can also use their spectrum resources in more areas through new business models.

In terms of 5G NR Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) enterprise private networks, it can provide dedicated, optimized and secure services. After optimization, it can better serve industrial applications. The ultra-low latency characteristics of 5G enterprise private networks help to efficiently deploy controllable local networks; its security can provide multiple security guarantees for data, such as saving sensitive data on local terminals.

5G NR Industrial Internet can support multiple architectures of enterprise private networks to achieve flexible deployment. The control of the wireless integrated enterprise private network is maintained and managed by the public network, while the data is stored and managed in the enterprise private network. Under the same network subscription user, the firewall between the public network and the enterprise private network is implemented by network slicing. At the same time, the enterprise private network can also realize an independent architecture, and the control and data under the independent architecture are retained in the enterprise private network. In addition, by accessing another subscription user, it can also support the switching of mobility between the enterprise private network and the public network.

In addition, enterprise private networks also have a variety of spectrum options. First, the most common is the licensed spectrum owned by mobile network operators. This type of spectrum has been used in use cases such as mines. Secondly, there is dedicated spectrum that supports synchronous sharing, such as the 3.7 GHz spectrum used in Germany that Qualcomm has shown you before. Next is the unlicensed spectrum that supports asynchronous sharing and the unlicensed spectrum that supports synchronous sharing. It is worth mentioning that synchronous sharing can also bring significant capacity gains and support low-latency communications.

Ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) is a key feature of 5G Release 16. As mentioned above, industrial environments are extremely harsh working environments for radio frequency, because there are many metal objects in industrial environments that block or reflect radio frequency. In order to achieve 99.9999% ultra-high reliability in these environments, we believe that spatial diversity supporting coordinated multi-point (CoMP) is essential, and multi-point coordination can provide high capacity gain for spatial diversity.

We helped validate 99.9999% data reliability for CoMP and started trials earlier this year. If you followed the 2019 Mobile World Congress (MWC 2019), Qualcomm announced at the conference that it had achieved very high levels of 5G NR terminal performance in the mmWave band, a use case similar to co-location of 5G NR mmWave antennas with existing Wi-Fi access points.

At the same time, we have also successfully achieved 5G connectivity comparable to Wi-Fi coverage in the 28GHz millimeter wave band. Our only goal is to achieve about 98% coverage in both downlink and uplink. The downlink peak burst rate can reach 5 Gbps, which will provide great capacity for nearly unlimited data access for terminals such as laptops, tablets and smartphones.

The above is my sharing today. We look forward to in-depth cooperation with you in the future.

Thanks!