Recently, Zhejiang Mobile and Huawei jointly completed the world's first call by leveraging the 5G-A high-throughput UPF on the live network with a Xiaomi mobile. The test result shows that the downlink rate of a single service flow of a single subscriber is faster than 4 Gbit/s, which is more than four times that of a conventional UPF. This achievement signifies a huge milestone for5G-A commercial networks, as Zhejiang Mobile's 5G-A network is now equipped to serve large-bandwidth subscribers.
With applications such as live streaming, cloud gaming, and ultra-HD videos rapidly developing and gaining traction, the use of wireless 5G-A multi-CC aggregation technology allows the bandwidth of a single subscriber to exceed multiple Gbit/s. And large flows that feature ultra-high traffic peak are not rare to see. A conventional UPF supports service processing on single vCPUs, and therefore can only handle small flows in most scenarios. However, as networks evolve, more and more large service flows will emerge, making it challenging for a single vCPU to process multiple large service flows. As a result, subscriber services are affected and the development of new Internet services is dragged down. This is a challenge to the vCPU processing of core networks in the industry.
Networking of the 5G-A high-throughput UPF
Huawei's innovative high-throughput UPF uses vCPU aggregation technology to achieve substantial improvements in complex logic algorithms related to flow time sequence and service awareness. Micro-flow scheduling is implemented based on hardware and software collaboration, allowing a large service flow to be divided into multiple micro-flows. In this way, a single large service flow can be processed on multiple vCPUs at the same time for load balancing, breaking through the processing limits of a single vCPU. This scheduling brings the high-quality experience of ubiquitous high-bandwidth services, as well as laying a foundation for the goal of 10 Gbit/s transmission rate per subscriber on the5G-A network. This test is conducted on the E2E live network environment of Zhejiang Mobile to test the speed of a single service flow of a single subscriber on a UE. The test results show that the bandwidth is stable at over4 Gbit/s. This real-world experience demonstrates the true bandwidth capabilities in a 5G-A commercial network, allowing subscribers to download a 1 GB movie in just 2 seconds.
The evolution from the 5G core network to the 5G-A core network represents an important step toward intelligent, digital, and personalized services in mobile communications. Zhejiang Mobile, having previously released the world's first intelligent and differentiated experience guarantee solution on the 5G-A core network in March, has once again partnered with Huawei to complete 5G-A core network high-throughput UPF live network testing. As an early mover in the industry, Zhejiang Mobile is well positioned for the future development of rich high-bandwidth services. In the next phase, Zhejiang Mobile plans to conduct tests for multiple service flows of multiple subscribers on 4K/8K live streaming, glasses-free 3D, and XR services to embrace the advent of the 5G-A era and meet the network requirements of multiple Gbit/s anytime, anywhere.