From WiFi to 5G, a new way of thinking may be a new opportunity for domestic RF front-end chip manufacturers

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has officially issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Broadcasting Corporation, which also indicates that China has officially entered the 5G era.

However, for many users, the first contact with 5G is 5G WiFi. Now with the commercialization of 5G, many users are confused about what is the difference between 5G WiFi and 5G?

WiFi and 5G Confusion

Although both 5G WiFi and 5G have the word "5G", they have completely different meanings. Both the standards and application scenarios represent two different technologies.

5G WiFi is more precisely 5GHz WiFi, which refers to the WiFi 5GHz operating frequency band in the IEEE 802.11 series of protocols.

5G is the abbreviation of 5th Generation, which is the fifth generation of mobile communication technology and standards.

As we all know, WiFi is a local area network wireless technology, mainly used in indoor scenarios. With the application of WiFi6 technology, compared with 5G mobile communications, WiFi has the advantages of high throughput, lower equipment and terminal costs, extremely low operation and maintenance costs, and confidentiality of regional isolation. It is widely used in enterprise LANs, home internal device interconnection, private network internal connections, etc., to avoid network congestion caused by too many devices or terminals accessing the operator's core network.

5G mobile communications are wide area network technologies with the advantages of wide coverage and support for high-speed mobile environments. They are mainly used in many scenarios such as outdoor connections, mobile medical care, Internet of Vehicles, environmental monitoring, and metropolitan area networks.

It can be seen that although WiFi and 5G have a certain degree of overlap in application scenarios, they complement each other and jointly realize a truly seamless network connection.

However, as the two most widely used wireless connection technologies, the battle between mobile communications represented by 4G LTE and WiFi is endless. Now, with the upcoming large-scale commercial use of 5G mobile communications, the expected transmission rate is more than ten times that of 4G LTE. The call for 5G to replace WiFi has re-emerged, but what is the truth?

The Convergence of WiFi and 5G

Cees Links, known as the "Father of WiFi," said in 2017: "In 1999-2000, some people proposed that 2G would replace WiFi; in 2008-2009, there was also speculation that 4G would replace WiFi. However, the application scenarios of 5G and WiFi are different. WiFi is mainly used in indoor environments, while 5G is a wide area network technology with more outdoor application scenarios. So I believe that WiFi and 5G will coexist for a long time."

Sure enough, on January 25, 2019, the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) and the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) announced that they would work together to promote the integration of 5G, WiFi wireless technologies and core networks.

The two alliances said that now is the time to provide a clear strategic path for "5G and WiFi converged RAN deployment" to fully utilize these features. This is a "priority"! The member units of the NGMN Alliance are all well-known mobile communication operators, with a total of more than 200 mobile communication networks and a user base of more than 60% of the world. The WBA Alliance is committed to the promotion of WiFi and the improvement of user experience.

The joint report states that "network-level convergence" between 5G and WiFi is essential to ensure that the "complementary" functions of the two types of radio access networks (RAN) can be combined to provide "seamless" network services. The report also lists many use cases and vertical industries that may require "comprehensive resources" from 5G and WiFi networks to work together to provide cost-effective solutions and jointly meet various throughput, latency, connection density, coverage, availability and reliability requirements.

Differences and similarities between WiFi and 5G air interface protocols and radio frequency technologies

From the perspective of application scenarios, the wide area network characteristics of 5G technology can't help but remind people of "WiMAX (Broadband Wireless Access Metropolitan Area Network Technology)" which was very popular more than ten years ago but unfortunately died down. WiMAX, which also originated from the IEEE 802.1x wireless technology standard protocol, has commonality with WiFi in wireless air interface protocols and standards.

According to Yu Qiang, Vice President of Marketing and Application Engineering of Kangxi Communication Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., in the early 21st century, compared with the 3GPP 3G mobile communication standard, WiMAX adopted many new technologies, such as OFDM orthogonal frequency division multiple access and MIMO multi-antenna, which greatly improved the data transmission capacity and had obvious data transmission advantages. Unfortunately, it was born at the wrong time. Before the birth of the first generation of magical machine "iPhone", the world's major mobile communication business was mainly concentrated on voice services, rather than data transmission business with technical advantages of WiMAX.

Due to the high real-time requirements of voice services, the voice digitization technology was not perfect at the time and the high cost of high-performance digital analog chips, the voice call quality of WiMAX networks was at a significant disadvantage compared to the pure voice channel technology of 3G mobile communications. As a result, it was difficult to promote the industry chain and had to shift to niche proprietary data network applications.

With the rapid development of the digital age and the rapid changes in related technologies, the rapid progress of chip technology and the subsequent substantial reduction in the cost of high-performance chips, digital voice has largely surpassed the signal transmission quality of traditional voice channels with the help of high-performance voice signal sampling and reconstruction technology, noise elimination technology, etc. This is why we often feel that the call quality of WeChat voice is even far better than that of regular phones in an environment with reliable data network connection.

Entering the 5G mobile communication era, data transmission is almost all the business requirements of wireless communication networks. Therefore, high-speed, low-latency, low-cost, and high-spectrum reuse data transmission technology has been grandly launched as the core wireless transmission technology of 5G.

As a result, 5G mobile communications inherit many core air interface technologies in the air interface protocol standards, such as low-latency TDD technology, OFDMA multiple access, MU-MIMO multi-user multi-antenna technology, high signal bandwidth (WiFi6 up to 160MHz vs 5G up to 100MHz), high modulation (WiFi6 can achieve 1024QAM vs 5G can achieve 256QAM), etc. In addition, in terms of operating frequency, 5GNR Sub-6GHz directly uses the 3.5GHz WiMAX frequency band, and other frequencies such as 2.6GHz are also adjacent to WiFi 2.4GHz, and 4.9GHz is adjacent to WiFi 5GHz.

Therefore, it can be said that 5G technology is more like an "enhanced version of WiMAX", which integrates and strengthens the underlying protocol of 4G LTE and the latest WiFi air interface technology! Therefore, compared with WiFi RF front-end chips, 5G RF front-end chips are highly similar in high linearity, TDD time-division dynamic characteristics, high modulation, and high bandwidth.

RF front-end: the road from WiFi to 5G

With the commercialization of 5G, it is imperative to develop 5G-related core chip technology with proprietary intellectual property rights. However, high-end RF chip technology, the crown jewel of the chip semiconductor industry, has always been in the hands of American manufacturers led by Skyworks, Qorvo, and Avago (Broadcom). How to break the technological monopoly of foreign giants has become a difficult problem for the development of the domestic RF front-end chip industry!

Fortunately, Kangxi Communication Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., which is known for its solid RF front-end technology foundation and scientific and rigorous R&D attitude, is rooted in WiFi RF front-end chip technology. It has quickly stood out in the domestic and foreign markets and has been recognized by many well-known system equipment manufacturers and extensive cooperation with chip manufacturers. Its WiFi5 RF front-end chip has shipped more than 10 million pieces shortly after it was launched on the market. It is also the first in China to achieve mass production of the latest WiFi6 technology RF front-end chips, and has advantages over similar products of international giants in key performance indicators such as linearity, efficiency, and power.

With the advent of the 5G era, they have developed the 5GNR series RF front-end chips in China based on high-linear WiFi RF front-end technology, opening a "core" channel for domestic substitution. We will wait and see!