Ericsson Technology Review 2020 issue 1
Mobile data traffic volumes are expected to increase by a factor of four by 2025, and 45 percent of that traffic will be carried by 5G networks. To deliver on customer expectations in this rapidly changing environment, communication service providers must overcome challenges in three key areas: building sufficient capacity, resolving operational inefficiencies through automation and artificial intelligence, and improving service differentiation. This issue of ETR magazine provides insights about how to tackle all three.
Ericsson CTO Erik Ekudden’s view on addressing 5G challenges together
Mobile data traffic volumes are expected to increase by a factor of four by 2025, and 45 percent of that traffic will be carried by 5G networks. To deliver on customer expectations in this rapidly changing environment, communication service providers (CSPs) must overcome challenges in three key areas: building sufficient capacity, resolving operational inefficiencies through automation and artificial intelligence (AI), and improving service differentiation. Fortunately, this issue of ETR magazine includes articles with insights about how to tackle all three of them.
Ericsson is deeply committed to helping CSPs and other stakeholders understand and plan for the many new 5G NR opportunities that are on the horizon. The significant enhancements to 5G NR in 3GPP releases 16 and 17 in particular are certain to play a critical role in expanding both the availability and the applicability of 5G NR in both industry and public services. Read all about it – and so much more – in the latest issue of ETR magazine.
For many operators, the introduction of the 5G System (5GS) to provide wide-area services in existing Evolved Packet System (EPS) deployments is a critical step toward creating a full-service, futureproof 5GS in the longer term. Our article on the topic provides an overview of all the aspects that operators need to consider when putting together a robust EPS-to-5GS migration strategy and offers guidance on how to adapt the transition to address a CSP’s specific needs per domain.
To cope with the large increase in required bit rate per site and achieve a cost-efficient rollout of 5G New Radio (NR), CSPs also need a good understanding of the different RAN architecture and transport network alternatives available to them. In this issue, we present all the available options and explain why automation and tight integration between the RAN and the transport network are critical to achieving cost efficient deployments.
The surge in data volume that will come from the massive number of devices enabled by 5G has made edge computing more important than ever before. Beyond its abilities to reduce network traffic and improve user experience, edge computing will also play a critical role in enabling use cases for ultra-reliable low-latency communication in industrial manufacturing and a variety of other sectors. Our article on the topic explores how to deliver distributed edge computing solutions that can host different kinds of platforms and applications and provide a high level of flexibility for application developers.
The integration of AI into current and future generations of cellular access will be critical to achieving Ericsson’s vision of creating a cellular network that constantly adapts itself both to customer requirements and to the static and dynamic characteristics of different scenarios. The AI article in this issue explains how AI can be applied most effectively in three RAN performance improvement domains: network design, network optimization and RAN algorithms.
This issue of the magazine also features an article about federated learning (FL) – a smarter, more resource-efficient way for CSPs to ensure consistent QoE. The article demonstrates that it is possible to migrate from a conventional machine learning model to an FL model and significantly reduce the amount of information that is exchanged between different parts of the network, thereby enhancing privacy without negatively impacting accuracy.
Ericsson is deeply committed to helping CSPs and other stakeholders understand and plan for the many new 5G NR opportunities that are on the horizon. The significant enhancements to 5G NR in 3GPP releases 16 and 17 are certain to play a critical role in expanding both the availability and the applicability of 5G NR in both industry and public services. Our article on this topic analyzes the most notable new developments in these coming releases, and shares our insights about the future beyond release 17.
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