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The microwave industry has reached a consensus on the evolution direction of 5G/5.5G to ultra-broadband, simplified, and multi-channel, and is fully prepared for the new era.
Because microwave transmission is such a widely adopted technology, each evolutionary advance of the broader industry tends to spur further innovations in microwave technology in particular. The needs of 5G and 5.5G spurred the development of wider, smarter microwave pipes; increasing scarcity of spectrum resources drove more spectral efficiency gains with microwave; the digital transformation of enterprises was met with new microwave solutions tailored to their needs; carriers' commitments to provide universal coverage prompted efforts to bring down the TCO of microwave technology; and, with the emergence of new applications like ultra-broadband, multi-channel microwave, and ultra-long-haul transmission, microwave again rose to the occasion with new innovations in planning and delivery.
The larger bandwidth of 5G and 5.5G puts increasing the capacity of microwave backhaul high on the agenda. Demand for backhaul capacity could soon be tens of times higher than what it is now. Among all the microwave spectrum options, E-band is considered the sweet spot for 5G and 5.5G deployments, hence the importance of fully exploring its potential capacity. In the meantime, the increasing density of microwave networks and paucity of spectrum resources necessitates the improvement of spectral efficiency.
In the current climate of global economic recovery, industry digital transformation is catalyzing a myriad of industrial applications of microwave transmission, such as in offshore wind power, disaster relief, and power transmission. Microwave plays an important role in connecting industries and bringing network access to every part of society.
Universal coverage requirements imposed on carriers have driven innovation in the microwave transmission space. Those innovations are bringing down TCO through flexible modular design of products and solutions, lean deployments, and simplified O&M. Long-haul microwave, for example, leverages new technologies such as high-gain beamforming (HGBF) to bring down TCO.
The communications industry has evolved from Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH), Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH), and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) to Internet Protocol (IP), and mobile backhaul has likewise been changing from carrying only voice and data traffic to supporting the mobile Internet. In this process, ultra-broadband microwave has led to the emergence of new KPIs for future microwave planning.
The mass deployment of networks and introduction of new technologies such as multi-channel microwave and long-haul transmission inevitably result in complexities and challenges in planning, installation, O&M, and optimization, but have also spurred the industry to develop new solutions for efficient microwave deployment and O&M.
