Guo Xiaoyan of China Mobile: China Mobile's Internet of Things follows the NB-IoT route丨2017 Communications Industry Internet of Things Conference

China Mobile Internet of Things Deputy Director of the Terminal Department of the Research Institute: Guo Xiaoyan

Guo Xiaoyan said: There are currently two solutions for LPWA cellular IoT, one is the licensed spectrum basic solution, and the other is the unlicensed spectrum solution. NB- IoT , eMTC, etc. differ in coverage, terminal power consumption and cost, number of connections, speed, mobility, language and other services. Recently, China Mobile still focuses on NB-IoT.

In addition, Guo Xiaoyan also emphasized that in terms of cellular Internet of Things, China Mobile will focus on vertical industry needs centered around low power consumption, long battery life, wide coverage, and large connections, focusing on terminal modules, networks, and Internet of Things platforms, and providing industry-leading terminal, pipe, and cloud service systems.

In addition, Guo Xiaoyan also introduced China Mobile's IoT open platform OneNET, which covers eight functions, including massive connections; providing data storage; using a distributed rhythm to provide complete data interfaces and guarantees. In addition, China Mobile has currently cooperated with Ericsson and Hisense on the OneNET platform. Through NB-IoT, some smart home devices such as air conditioners can be intelligently controlled, and factory screws can also be intelligently controlled to save costs.

Leifeng.com learned that a Japanese media recently stated in an analysis report that China Mobile dominates Asia with a market value of US$225.3 billion, which is closely related to its excellent performance in 4G networks. Today, in the context of the global 5G era, China Mobile has higher goals and requirements in the Internet of Things. It is relying on industry alliances and organizations such as NGMN, 5GAA, and TIAA to promote the construction of China's independent core ecology. Let's take a look at Guo Xiaoyan's wonderful speech at this conference.

The following is the transcript of Guo Xiaoyan’s speech. Leifeng.com has edited it without changing the original meaning:

Good morning, everyone. Let me introduce to you some of China Mobile’s ideas and practices in the field of Internet of Things.

This chart comes from an authoritative market report. Just now, China Telecom leader Zhao Jianjun has already mentioned that in the future, China may take the lead in the Chinese market in terms of connection speed. For operators, the most basic thing we can do is to have high-quality network guarantees. We will define our needs based on some business requirements, which are generally divided into several types:

One type is LPWA type applications;

Some are medium-speed and do not have a significant impact on power consumption, but they meet the corresponding needs, such as some business applications of smart furniture and smart wearables.

The other is high-speed, low-latency services, whose contributions are not very obvious, including smart driving and telemedicine.

LPWA cellular IoT is mainly based on NB-IoT

We have analyzed the networks currently provided by operators and found that they are still insufficient to meet the needs of the future Internet of Things. Just now, Mr. Zhao also mentioned that our network coverage is insufficient and there is also a lack of standby time, especially in terms of sensors. Now we see that the standby time of some network terminals is only about two months. Another thing is that the cost of the industry's separate networking may be relatively high. In addition, the reliability of the system needs to be improved, and many Internet of Things will be based on the four existing communication protocols, which will affect the scale of deployment and development.

After our comparison, compared with the unlicensed frequency band, the LPWA cellular IoT solution has more advantages in anti-interference, security, stability, etc. There are two solutions, one is the licensed spectrum basic solution, and the other is the unlicensed spectrum solution.

NB-IoT and eMTC differ in coverage, terminal power consumption and cost, number of connections, speed, mobility, language and other services. Recently, China Mobile still focuses on NB-IoT.

In the entire cellular Internet of Things, China Mobile focuses on vertical industry needs around low power consumption, long battery life, wide coverage and large connectivity. We focus on terminal modules, networks and Internet of Things platforms, and are committed to providing industry-leading terminal, pipe and cloud service systems.

OneNET covers eight functions and has mature cases

Based on OneNET of our IoT, we will provide the ability to plan network connections for applications and provide some simple services for IoT applications. Our basic communication suite is SDK as the entry point for terminal-side data collection, and provides data encapsulation format and simple network transmission interface, which can lower the threshold for third-party application development.

We have some practices. Ericsson has an Ericsson Panda factory in Nanjing. As you can see, there is a screwdriver here. There are more than 1,000 of these screwdrivers in the Ericsson factory, and the unit price is 10,000 yuan. Where is this screwdriver used? It needs to be calibrated after working a certain number of times, and there is no way to count the number of times it works.

The calibration method they use is based on time, such as calibration every two weeks or one month, but different screwdrivers are distributed on different assembly lines, and their working frequencies are different. Some may only make 8 screws, while others may have to make more than 60 screws. Although it is a small problem, it is also a big problem for them.

We used NB-IoT to provide them with an application that can monitor the frequency of use of each screwdriver, so that they can calibrate according to the usage of different screwdrivers, thereby achieving more refined management, which of course can also save costs.

In addition, we have implemented smart home solutions with Hisense. We can use NB-IoT to intelligently control air conditioners and other devices. Everyone is familiar with smart homes, so I won't go into detail. Ericsson and Hisense both won at the 2017 MWC conference. We cooperated with Wipaige on smart water services in NB-IoT, and through this, we joined the Industrial Internet Alliance in the United States and promoted this application.

Next, I will introduce our OneNET. OneNET has eight major functions, including massive connections; providing data storage; using a distributed rhythm to provide complete data interfaces and guarantees, as well as equipment management; direct monitoring management; real-time control during on-site debugging; information release; and data detection. There are also some operator capabilities and video service capabilities that we have packaged.

We provide an open API interface, which is convenient for everyone to provide terminals and applications and shorten the cycle. In addition, we can also provide data analysis. The entire solution can be expanded in many fields, not limited to remote meter reading, smart furniture, smart hardware , industrial control, etc. China Mobile will expand and strengthen the connection in the field of Internet of Things in the future.

Simultaneous preparation of vehicle connectivity, striving to achieve industry maturity in 3-5 years

I just talked about the Internet of Things. At the same time, we are also preparing for the Internet of Vehicles . The development of the Internet of Vehicles has gone through three stages:

The first stage is services based on in-vehicle information, including in-vehicle navigation, route planning, and entertainment.

The second stage is the assisted driving stage, which is what we now call V2V, V2I, V2N and V2P.

The third stage is intelligent driving. We can see that companies including Baidu are conducting experiments in intelligent transportation.

In achieving the ultimate goal There are three types of autonomous driving : autonomous, networked, and intelligently networked. Autonomous means obtaining information about the vehicle's surroundings through advanced autonomous sensors, while networked means enabling vehicles to perceive surrounding information, and vehicles to humans. Intelligently networked means integrating with communication technology to improve accuracy and reduce costs.

As you can see from this table, no matter in terms of standard release, industry support, communication distance between vehicles, and transmission rate, we have made some comparisons. You can see that DSRC started earlier and the industry is relatively mature now. However, we can see that V2X has advantages in terms of two important indicators, including vehicle-to-vehicle communication distance and transmission rate. We are now focusing on V2X and hope to achieve industry maturity in three to five years.

China Mobile is also actively experimenting in the field of Internet of Vehicles. On the one hand, we are cooperating with the government to promote the issuance of V2X commercial spectrum. On the other hand, we are also vigorously promoting LTE-V2X technology experiments in six places including Shanghai, Chongqing, and Hangzhou, actively promoting the research and development of V2X products and applications, and accelerating the maturity of the industry.

5G Joint Innovation: Building China's Independent Core Ecosystem Based on Industry Alliances

On the other hand, relying on industry alliances and organizations such as NGMN, 5GAA, TIAA, and China Telecom Council, we hope to promote the construction of China's independent core ecosystem.

When talking about the Internet of Things, everyone will think of 5G. 5G has three scenarios: one is the augmented mobile broadband, the other is mMTC large-scale device communication, and high-reliability and low-latency communication. In the future, NB-IoT will evolve towards 5G, including mMTC.

We are actively deploying 5G, conducting 5G standard research on the one hand, and working with industry partners to build a common ecosystem on the other. We have three goals for 5G joint innovation:

One is to provide connectivity. We hope to make 5G the basic connectivity capability for vertical industries through cooperation with them.

The second is the ability to build vertical applications.

The third is to jointly explore new markets and new opportunities.

At present, 5G Lianchuang focuses on these six areas. Of course, as we develop, our platform will expand. These six areas are basic communication capabilities, Internet of Things, Internet of Vehicles, Industrial Internet, cloud robots, and virtual and augmented reality. In addition, we have also built some open laboratories in Hangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, and Qingdao to attract local partners.

Since our 5G Alliance was established not long ago, 58 partners have joined the Alliance. We are divided into two categories: member units and mass innovation partner units. Member units mainly lead key projects and participate in the construction of joint laboratories, while mass innovation partners mainly rely on the experimental environment to carry out some product development and testing.

You can see that among our members, there are four major categories. For basic communications, we have joined forces with Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Datang. For chips, Qualcomm and Intel are the representatives. We have many chip partners. Instruments are also very important partners. We also have some mass innovation partners, including Weipaige and so on.

In the future, we hope to work together with all parties in the industry to build a new era of the Internet of Everything. Thank you everyone!