RedCap (5G Lightweight) technology achieves the goals of cost savings, lower power consumption and reduced size of devices by streamlining device capabilities and reducing complexity, while retaining 5G native capabilities, achieving a balance between technology and cost. This paper studies the technical characteristics of RedCap and related national policies, and combines them with the network requirements of the power industry to analyze the application and deployment options of RedCap in different scenarios of the power industry, and discusses the development potential of RedCap technology and the deployment strategies of operators.
5G RedCap Technology Features
In order to expand the application scope of 5G in the IoT field, in June 2022, 3GPP froze the 5G R17 standard version, which introduces the 5G RedCap technology, which meets the connectivity needs of medium- and high-speed IoT by tailoring the device capability and reducing the complexity, and realizing the goals of lowering the cost, shrinking the size, and reducing the power consumption.
Compared with 5G NR, RedCap has been simplified in terms of spectrum bandwidth, antennas, power consumption, modulation, etc. (as shown in Table 1.) RedCap's bandwidth in the FR1 band has been reduced from 100MHz to 20MHz, the number of transmitting and receiving antennas has been reduced from the typical 4 antennas to 2 or 1 antennas, and the maximum number of downlink MIMO layers has been reduced, which lowers the terminal RF transceiver and baseband processing module capacity requirements. At the same time, RedCap's highest-order modulation is reduced from a maximum of 256QAM downlink to 64QAM, full-duplex FDD is reduced to half-duplex mode, and capabilities such as CA (Carrier Aggregation), MR-DC (Dual Connectivity), and DAPS (Dual Activation Protocol Stack) are cropped to further reduce the design complexity and cost of the terminal. In addition, RedCap introduces eDRX (extended discontinuous reception) and RRM (measurement relaxation mechanism) technologies to meet the low-power requirements of IoT.
While simplifying its capabilities, RedCap retains 5G-specific native capabilities, including edge computing, 5G slicing, 5G LAN, 5G low-latency, 5G localization, 5G accurate timing and other features, which can meet the network performance requirements of industrial Internet, video surveillance, smart grid, Telematics and other industry applications.
Compared with 5G NR, RedCap can effectively control cost, reduce power consumption and shrink the size; compared with 4G LTE, RedCap has the characteristics of 5G large bandwidth and low latency, and also achieves a balance between performance, functionality and cost, which solves the key pain points of 5G applications in vertical industries, and provides more possibilities for the development of 5G industry applications on a large scale.
RedCap Policy Background
5G RedCap is a key technology for the popularization of 5G applications in the field of medium- and high-speed IOT, which will further promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries empowered by 5G, as well as the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy.
China attaches great importance to the development and application of 5G RedCap.2023 In October 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Notice on Promoting the Evolution of 5G Lightweight (RedCap) Technology and the Innovative Development of Applications, which explicitly put forward that by 2025, the comprehensive capacity of the 5G RedCap industry will be significantly improved, new products and new modes will continue to emerge, the scale of convergence applications will be upgraded, and the security capacity will be synchronized enhancement. Among them, 5G RedCap scale coverage will be realized in cities above the county level nationwide, and the number of 5G RedCap connections will realize ten million growth.
In order to accelerate the innovative development of 5G and promote the commercial process of 5G RedCap in a solid and orderly manner, in April 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Notice on Carrying Out the 5G Lightweight (RedCap) Through Action in 2024, which specifies the key work in the seven aspects of standards, networks, chips, modules, terminals, applications, and guarantees, and lays a solid foundation for the popularization and This has laid a solid foundation for the popularization and application of 5G RedCap technology in China.
RedCap can be widely used in electric power, security, vehicle networking, industrial digital mining and other fields. With the rapid development of the digital economy, the industry's demand for 5G RedCap has become increasingly strong. Market research firm Counterpoint Research predicts that 5G RedCap modules will account for 18% of total cellular IoT module shipments by 2030. Another firm, IoT Analytics, predicts that 5G-enabled IoT module shipments will account for 16% of the market in 2026, with RedCap playing a key role.
Under the dual impetus of policy leadership and market demand, 5G RedCap technology will become increasingly mature, application scenarios will be more abundant, ushering in a golden period of rapid development.
Test Program
This test adopts the integrated technical solution of "end, network and industry", deploying 5G RedCap terminals on the end side, connecting distribution FTUs (distribution switch monitoring terminals), DTUs (wireless terminals), energy controllers and other equipment; on the network side, 5QI soft slices and RB resources reserved 1% hard slices have been opened respectively, and the special UPF (user-facing function) of the production control region is connected to the main station and monitoring center of the power distribution in the production control region. UPF (user plane function) dedicated to the production control region to realize the connection with the power distribution master station and monitoring center of the production control region. Through the comparison test of different technologies such as RedCap/5G NR, soft slicing/hard slicing, etc., it verifies the normal operation of applications such as distribution three-remote, grid monitoring, distributed FA, etc. on the service side.
After determining the test scenario and location, the operator selects a nearby 5G base station to turn on the RedCap function, and configures 5QI soft slices and RB resources reserved 1% hard slices on the network side, respectively. The testers install power RedCap terminals, and tune the connections between the terminals and the power distribution FTUs, PMUs (power management units) equipment and the power distribution master station to carry out the service comparison test.
Test results
The test includes comparison tests of RedCap terminal with 5G NR terminal and 4G terminal, soft slicing with hard slicing, and service busy time with idle time and other scenarios.
1. Test type: 5G hard slicing and 5G soft slicing delay comparison
Test service model: single-user Ping 255 b y t e s packets, 1 0 0 m s sending interval, a total of 7000.
Test results show that the average delay of hard slicing is 60% lower than that of soft slicing. When the 5G network service is congested, the maximum delay of hard slicing is 62 ms, which can make the power service delay and reliability unaffected; while soft slicing will have a large delay during busy time, which affects the service quality.
2. Test type: 5G soft slicing and 4G delay comparison
The test results show that 4G bandwidth is small and without slicing technology, it is easy to generate congestion, resulting in packet loss and large delay. 5G RedCap soft slicing has no packet loss in all scenarios, and the Ping success rate is 100%.
The processing time (including switch tripping time) of regular protection service of distribution network is required to be ≤100ms, and considering that there are more switch cascades in the distribution network automation system, the general requirement is that the service execution time should be ≤150ms.As can be seen from the test results, the success rate of RedCap terminal network access, the success rate of data uploading and the success rate of remote command issuance all reach 100%, and key indexes such as the access delay, data uploading and downloading rate all meet the requirements of electric power production. The access delay, data upload, download rate and other key indicators meet the quality requirements of power production control business.
The power distribution scenario is the most applied and representative scenario in the power production control region. The above analysis of power network requirements and service tests proved that 5G RedCap technology can fully meet the power service requirements.
RedCap Power Industry Scenarios
To build a new type of power system and realize the goals of clean and low-carbon power generation, safe and efficient transmission and transformation, flexible and reliable power distribution, and diversified and friendly use of electricity, a ubiquitous, highly reliable, highly secure and economical communication network is needed. 5G RedCap technology can reuse the existing mature 5G network, give full play to the network scale effect, and empower each link of the power system with low cost, low power consumption, and high reliability features.
Distributed New Energy Power Generation
New energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind power are clean and low-carbon, but are susceptible to weather effects and characterized by randomness and volatility. As the proportion of new energy power generation continues to increase, the grid consumption, regulation capacity is facing serious challenges. The traditional manual control method of "wind and light abandonment" problem occurs from time to time, the need to use technical means of its intelligent control. New energy field stations are widely distributed and large in scope, and the high cost and long construction period of wired fiber optic network has led to a low rate of field station control in some areas.
The information collection and control command data of PV power generation are generally between 20k~100kbit/s. Through 5G RedCap to collect all kinds of data from inverters, convergence boxes, energy storage stations, irradiators, meteorological instruments, meters, etc., the state of PV stations can be perceived in real time; through 5G RedCap to dock with telemotors, AGCs and other equipments, remote regulation and control and intelligent operation and maintenance of PV grid-connection can be realized, which can effectively and efficiently control the PV stations. Through 5G RedCap, remote control and intelligent operation and maintenance can be realized, effectively improving the power generation efficiency of the station and the safety of grid connection.
Power transmission line inspection
Power transmission lines have many points and long lines, which are prone to external damage, short circuit of foreign objects, corrosion and broken strands, and threat of fire and smoke, etc. Traditional manual inspection workload, low efficiency and high risk. Traditional manual inspection workload, low efficiency, high risk, each person can only inspect 10 kilometers or 3~4 towers per day.
Through the drone mounted 5G RedCap module for automatic inspection, can realize inspection video AI intelligent recognition, real-time back to the timely discovery of transmission lines loose, off, corrosion and other anomalies, and then alarm and accurately display the location of the fault. 5G dedicated network can ensure the safety of the drone flight, the real-time transmission of the inspection video; AI intelligent recognition can be at any time to find hidden danger, so that the detection efficiency increased several times. The bandwidth required for drone control and image transmission is 3M~5Mbit/s, and the time delay is less than 100ms, RedCap can fully meet its network requirements, and the power consumption is small, which can extend the endurance time of the drone.5G drone inspection can enhance the inspection efficiency, and save the inspection cost.
Substation Operation and Maintenance
As a key node of the power system, substations are the focus of power system operation monitoring. Outdoor substations are susceptible to extreme weather and require regular inspection and monitoring of meter readings, switch positions, equipment temperatures and other status. As substation inspection is repetitive, 5G power robots and 5G HD cameras can be deployed to carry out intelligent and automatic inspections of main equipment, relay rooms, terminal boxes and other facilities as well as the station environment, replacing O&M personnel in carrying out daily inspections, temperature measurements, meter readings and other repetitive tasks, creating conditions for O&M personnel to carry out remote unmanned inspections, thus improving efficiency and reducing the risk of on-site operations.
Power Distribution Automation
With the increasing demand for electricity and new business, distribution networks are facing problems such as large demand for information collection, many hidden faults and difficult daily inspections. Distributed FA, distribution PMU, distribution three-remote, intelligent station, distribution differential protection and other equipment are mainly responsible for the collection and sensing, fault location and isolation and recovery of the distribution network, which is the key to guaranteeing the power supply quality, operation efficiency and user experience, and such equipment has a wide range of points, and has higher requirements for communication delay and security.
Distribution automation based on "5G RedCap+Hard Slicing" can support highly reliable distribution protection, and through low-latency and highly reliable network transmission, it can realize rapid fault localization and isolation recovery, precise load control, real-time video monitoring, and ultimately achieve the goal of guaranteeing the safety and reliability of the power grid and improving service quality.
RedCap Industry Development Research
At present, major chip companies such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Hesi, and Zilight Spreadtrum have successively launched RedCap chip platforms, and companies such as TD Tech, Lierda, Shifted Telecom, CommuniLink, and China Mobile Internet of Things (CMIG) have released more than 20 RedCap modules, and more than 30 terminals, such as DTUs and cameras, have been launched in the market one after another. Nanrui, Smartcore, Unicom, CMO and other manufacturers have launched a variety of RedCap terminals dedicated to electric power, and have been commercially verified in the power grid. It is expected that by the end of 2024, the cost of RedCap module will drop to less than 200 RMB, and the cost of terminal will drop to less than 900 RMB. RedCap will drive the large-scale development of 5G applications with the cost advantage of terminal, and the upstream and downstream of industrial ecosystems, such as RedCap chips, modules, terminals, and applications, will usher in the outbreak of RedCap.