KDDI announced that the SA operation of 5G will begin to provide commercial services for legal persons. As an initial measure, this paper puts forward the measure of using 5G SA actively in the image transmission of "ABEMA".
KDDI announced on February 21, 2022 that it will work with AbemaTV to carry out the live video broadcast of Japan's first 5G independent (SA) operation, and start the 5G SA service for legal persons on the same day, but there are still many challenges to start in the real 5G SA era and accelerate the use of 5G by enterprises. For the last time, please see here. Through the introduction of SA, the usual network is separated from the dedicated network for image distribution through network segmentation. The reason for the need for SA in a stable image relay that ensures stable communication is that portable companies are not only base stations. The core network also proposes the transfer of SA applications used on 5G machines, and finally the environment can be prepared with 5G capabilities. KDDI announced the official launch of legal person-oriented services through its SA operation. Specifically, UDAGAWA BASE, a public studio in Shibuya District, Tokyo, is the 5G regionalization of KDDI. Based on Sony's "Xperia1III", using a smartphone prototype that supports 5G SA, the images captured by the camera are transmitted through the network of 5G SA for live broadcast. According to KDDI's explanation, the reason why video transmission requires SA operation seems to be to ensure a stable communication line quality. Services such as TV stations and ABEMA need a quality network that can steadily transmit high-quality images, but because the usual mobile communications are used for a variety of purposes, there is a weakness of unstable quality. Therefore, in the past, dedicated communication lines were prepared, or multiple mobile lines were bundled together to ensure stable communication, but large-scale equipment was needed, and there was the problem of spending a lot of staff's hands. However, if it is a 5G network used by SA, because the "network segmentation" of the virtual segmentation network can be used according to the purpose of use, stable network quality image transmission can be carried out by separating the network for image transmission from other networks. As the SLA required by segmentation is transformed into time-consuming SA operation, the biggest advantage is network segmentation, so KDDI believes that with the beginning of commercial services, it is very important to further develop network segmentation in the future. Among them, the company focuses on SLA (quality of Service Assurance). As mentioned in the previous ABEMA case, the company's requirement for network slicing is to continue to use the network at a stable quality without being affected by the external environment. Because of this, ensuring the quality of the slicing network and realizing the mechanism to maintain it are the important reasons to promote enterprises to make use of 5G. For this reason, KDDI devotes itself to developing the technology of "RAN Intelligent Controller" (RIC), which implements SLA not only in the core network, but also in the wireless access network (RAN) such as base station, to grasp the communication status of each user and allocate appropriate wireless resources. In fact, in September 2020, we carried out a verification experiment with Samsung Electronics of South Korea, using RIC for network slicing control and realizing end-to-end network slicing. However, RIC is also the technology stipulated by "O-RAN Alliance" to promote the openness of RAN, so KDDI is actively committed to the openness of RAN in the form of cooperating with SA. Then, on February 18, 2022, KDDI announced that Fujitsu, Samsung Electronics and the open 5G SA virtualized base station connected to the commercial network had successfully conducted data communication. This is communicated using base stations made up of devices from different manufacturers based on O-RAN. Specifically, a base station is constructed using a MMU (Massive MIMO Unit) manufactured by Fujitsu in a RU (Radio Unit) responsible for wireless communication, wherein a device manufactured by Samsung Electronics using virtualization technology uses a DU (Distributed Unit) that processes wireless signals and a CU (Central Unit) that aggregates the processed data and exchanges with the core network. Confirmed the things that can actually communicate. However, the development of these technologies is still in progress, and it will take time to introduce network slices to achieve the SLA required by enterprises in the actual commercial network. As a result, KDDI believes that the formal launch of services based on SA is more than two years ahead of 2024. With regard to this effort with ABEMA, the formal system introduction is still being studied while repeatedly verifying, and has not yet reached the stage of full introduction and full utilization in the actual field. Although the commercial services used by SA have been started, there are still many topics, and it takes time to really use them in enterprises. Sano Masahiro was born in Fukushima Prefecture and graduated from Tohoku University of Technology. As an engineer engaged in digital content development, turned to mobile phone, mobile professional writer. Now, from industry trends to culture, he is engaged in writing in a wide range of fields related to mobile phones.
Sano Masahiro
