In recent 5G industry development seminar in 2018, Cheng Weiqiang who is the deputy director of the China mobile's network technology research institute said there are 5G changes in the field of network, business and etc., such as Cloudification and slicing. It puts forward new requirements to the transmission network. Hence, basic resources, the architecture,bandwidth, delay and synchronization of the transmission network need to be reconstituted.
Considering the network current situation , China Mobile has proposed SPN, and its design goal have three aspects. First, it is oriented towards the evolution and upgrading PTN, interoperability between 4G and 5G business, and it is required to be compatible with the current network’s PTN function. The second is the need for large bandwidth and flexible forwarding. It not only requires coordination of multi-level resources but also the integration of L1 ~ L3 capabilities. The third, for the ultra-low delay and vertical industries, we need to support the soft and hard isolated slices, and we need to integrate TDM and packet switching.
That is to say, China Mobile wanted to use the new system (SPN) to build a new network. New equipment will be built with new chips and new modules. Then, using new equipment to build out the new network. New business will be carried on the new network.
For that, China Mobile is building a new network with five aspects£ºnew chip, new module, new equipment, new network and new business.
According to Cheng Weiqiang, with concerns of chips, SPN needs centralized business processing chip and FlexE interface processing chip in the access layer. In the core layer, we need unified switched network chip and distributed business processing chip. At the same time, the specification of the SPN chip for 5G is also very strict, the capacity is at least 12.8T and the delay should be controlled within 10 microseconds with the ability of slicing and isolation. In addition,concerning the cost-effectiveness for 5G transmission network, the price of the chip should be refined in the layers of access, convergence and core.
In the initial stage of SPN last year, China mobile proposed the explicit demand of SPN chip, Huawei, ZTE and Fiberhome have made great progress on the chip, especially the core exchange chip of SPN.