The closing ceremony of the 2023 World 5G Convention. (PHOTO: Zhou Weihai /S&T Daily)

By ZONG Shihan, CHEN Chunyou & SONG Ziyan

The 2023 World 5G Convention held in Zhengzhou, Henan province in central China, from December 6-8, saw experts discuss technological breakthroughs and propose industrial paths for 5G development, drawing a blueprint for a better future.

Accelerating technological evolution

Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering(CAE),  said at the convention that with the rapid development of information technology represented by 5G, cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, major countries and international organizations are strengthening research on 5G-Advanced and 6G, competing for first-mover advantage in the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform.

Although 5G technology still faces various challenges, there are directions for its development. Among them, terahertz technology and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) are attracting attention.

Terahertz is a unit of frequency, denoting one trillion cycles per second. Terahertz technology refers to the use of electromagnetic waves in the terahertz region of the electromagnetic spectrum. RIS is a programmable structure that can be used to control the propagation of electromagnetic waves.

Yao Jianquan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), pointed out that for 5G’s evolution to 5G-Advanced and 6G, the network bandwidth and transfer rate have to be improved and time delay reduced. Competition among major economies over terahertz technology has already begun.

According to Yao, although humans do not yet fully understand and apply terahertz technology, the technology has shown advantages in some industries. In addition to mobile communication based on fingerprints, invisibility, safety and other factors, terahertz has vast application prospects in the field of biomedicine.

According to Cui Tiejun, another academician of CAS, RIS is one of the solutions to technical challenges of 6G. Its typical feature is that it can control the propagation of electromagnetic waves in real time and process digital information to connect the digital world and physical world. Since the RIS concept was proposed in 2014, his team has established a complete information metamaterials system and promoted its application in multiple field, Cui added.

Enabling industry development

With its improvement and popularization, 5G technology has begun to play a key role in various industries.

It has enabled scientific drilling in unmanned areas tens of thousands of meters deep and hundreds of kilometers away, said Sun Longde, an academician of CAE, adding that in the Daqing Oilfield in Heilongjiang province, 5G is used for data acquisition, reducing inspection time from days to 20 minutes.

In manufacturing, 5G is helping with data acquisition and high-precision positioning. In the medical field, it plays a role in emergency treatment, remote diagnosis and hospital management. In agriculture, the integration of new digital technology and biotechnology has ushered in an intelligent breeding era.

The main application of 5G is in industrial Internet, which has achieved results in machine vision and remote-controlled robots, and will play a greater role in discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing as it improves, Wu said.

"From a drop of oil to a thread, from a piece of iron to a section of steel, from heavy equipment to shoes, hats, clothing, and snacks, 5G has evolved from single production to large-scale production, from peripheral auxiliary to core production," said Li Pizheng, executive director of China Mobile.