Tag: Avanci 5G

As part of a series of articles, we spotlight the innovation of another of the patent owners in our independent Avanci marketplace, China Mobile. This has been translated and adapted from an original article published by Huanqiu.com in China.

At the forefront of developing 5G technology and industry, China Mobile has been busy building and operating 5G communications networks, creating a new information infrastructure underpinned by 5G, Compute-First Networking (CFN) and Smart Mid-end Platform, with the aim of building a new information service system featuring Connectivity + Computing power + Ability.

To scale up 5G private networks and advance industrial digitalization, China Mobile was the first in the industry to release 5G Private Network Technology System 2.0. Additionally, it enhanced the network’s capabilities by leveraging 5G LAN and TSN, and improved access control capabilities by utilizing NPN and Secondary Authentication. It has also strengthened its service carrying capacity and expanded its 5G private network capabilities.

Huanqiu’s reporter spoke to Li Nan and Hu Nan, deputy heads of the China Mobile Research Institute’s Department of Wireless and Terminal Technology. Li and Hu shared their insights on the development of 5G technology and their experience of technological innovation.

A culture of innovation is an important driver that leads to multiple patents and standards

“Since joining the China Mobile Research Institute in 2007 after graduating, I have been engaged in research on and the international standardization of 4G, 5G and NB-IoT. I’ve also participated in the research of 6G technology. Now, I am working on technology research, standardization and industrialization in the field of wireless cloud networks,” Li Nan said.

Li finds his research motivation in China Mobile’s corporate culture, which champions responsibility and excellence, as well as its mission of Creating an Infinite Communications World and Becoming the Pillar of the Information Society. It’s what drives him to explore cutting-edge communications technology. After joining China Mobile, Li was excited to be engaged in standardization work. As one of the first representatives of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an international standards development organization, Li took part in formulating TD-LTE and 5G standards and the R&D of international standard-essential patents. His participation enabled him and his team to work with the best researchers in the industry, and to witness first-hand the application of their self-developed solutions and standards in products and networks. These valuable experiences helped them create and deliver value, and also serve as a source of inspiration for him and his team.

“I have spent over 10 years working on forward-looking wireless technology research and standardization since joining the company in 2008. In this period, I have been involved in the formulation of 4G- and 5G-related standards and the development of patents and international standard-essential patents,” Hu Nan said.

“Innovation is in our DNA. We are keenly aware of the importance of innovation for our development, and even for the whole industry’s growth. For example, when working on a carrier aggregation project, we recognized that being independent in terms of carrier aggregation is essential for LTE and 5G NR—it took us over five years to finish the overall closed-loop R&D from technology R&D and test verification to the launch of international standards and commercial application on a larger scale. During this period, my team encountered various setbacks, but the entire project’s deliverables were completed. This accomplishment is inseparable from China Mobile’s emphasis on standardization and continuous input. More importantly, these patents can help the communications industry develop sustainably prosperously,” Hu added.

With V2X and IoT development speeding up, 5G is driving the continuous transformation of related industries

When asked by the reporter about 5G’s development trend and the application of 5G technology in the fields of V2X and IoT, Li said that V2X and IoT represent the most cutting-edge and widespread industry applications when it comes to 5G application scenarios. He believes that as the technology matures and costs decrease, 5G, a vital technology in a connected world, will grow explosively.

The general nodes of IoT are powered by traditional 2G and 4G technologies. For power-line inspections and other industrial scenarios, which require excellent latency and reliability, and industry application scenarios such as high-rate uplink transmission, 5G is the optimal choice, pointing to the technology’s tremendous market potential. In addition, as 5G technology continues to evolve and mature, it will also become commonplace in smart wearables and other IoT applications.

With the Internet of Vehicles, the application of 5G technology to autonomous driving will transform people’s mobility experiences. Autonomous driving is also bound to create new safety, reliability, latency and group communications requirements. The combination of 5G and positioning technologies such as BeiDou and GPS, as well as vehicle-to-vehicle sensor interoperability technology, could serve as the foundation that underpins autonomous driving, thus further enhancing safety and efficiency.

Li also believes that ever-maturing autonomous driving technology will in the future free drivers’ hands and help to create new in-car entertainment scenarios, leading to new business, which will in turn create new 5G application scenarios and markets.

Avanci partnership enables technology inventions to empower global markets

In January 2019, China Mobile joined one-stop licensing platform Avanci, where it can license its global patent portfolio of 2G, 3G and 4G standard-essential patents in the IoT market. Speaking on China Mobile’s partnership with Avanci, Hu said that Avanci enabled IoT industry players to access the vast majority of wireless communications standard patents through a single agreement, thereby contributing to the rapid application of wireless communications technologies.

In the past three years of cooperating with Avanci, China Mobile has gained a platform to promote its patented technologies globally and also placed a greater emphasis on its own R&D, allowing it to share its scientific and technological innovations with global industry partners. More than 40 world-renowned automotive brands now license China Mobile’s wireless communications technologies through Avanci, covering more than 65 million licensed connected cars on the road around the world.*

“The partnership with Avanci is a new initiative for China Mobile to explore IoT patent licensing rules and models. China Mobile joined forces with Avanci with the intention of helping the IoT industry reduce patent litigation risks, eliminate barriers, promote synergies between the IoT industry and wireless communications technologies, and drive high-quality development,” concludes Hu.

* Updated numbers since the original article was published

In 2017, Panasonic was among the first patent owners to join the Avanci marketplace. A long-time leader in technology research and development, Panasonic has been involved in standardization in the communications arena since the formation of the 3GPP, and its engineers have participated in thousands of 3G, 4G and 5G standardization meetings across the globe.

We recently spoke to two Panasonic experts involved in developing technologies which are licensed through Avanci, to understand their personal stories as researchers and inventors.

Akihiko Nishio has had a 22-year career in Panasonic. He worked initially on 3G modem development, moving in 2003 to focus on research and standardization work for LTE and LTE-A. He then spent several years in a business division, developing smart home systems, using knowledge and experience from his work on cellular standardization.

In 2019, Nishio-san returned to the corporate R&D team to work on 3GPP standardization now for 5G, also working on 5G enhancements for non-terrestrial networks using satellite communications, more recently becoming project leader for technologies beyond 5G, including 6G. To date, he has been the first named inventor on more than 600 granted patents.

Ayako Iwata joined Panasonic in 2003. Her research in communications began as a student, when she did laboratory work with a researcher from a mobile communications firm, which motivated her to change track from her initial interest in fiber communications.

At Panasonic, Iwata-san is involved in 3GPP standardization, and since 2008 has been actively involved in the RAN1 working group, which is responsible for the development of specifications dealing with LTE-Advanced, 5G NR, and beyond. Her research in 3GPP began with Relay in Release 10, a feature based on both base station and user equipment. She was involved in research on control channel technologies for LTE Advanced and 5G, winning an award from Japan’s Technical Committee on Radio Communications Systems (RCS) in 2009. She is currently researching 5G technologies including Sidelink, a part of vehicle to everything (V2X) communications which will be important for connected vehicles and other IoT devices.  She is named as first inventor on over 300 patents and patent applications.

For both inventors, the motivation to choose a career in communications research came from their university studies, where they spent time in the laboratory investigating elements of communication. They both joined Panasonic to be able to continue to research in this area, at a company that led the Japanese market both for mobile phones and network infrastructure and was contributing to the development of international communications standards.

Both have been active in the work of 3GPP in developing technology standards and have experienced the rigorous way in which each element of the standard is selected through submissions from delegates from various companies such as themselves which undergo thorough technical evaluation. Nishio-san remembers many discussions that went past midnight in the search for the best solution from many submissions, and both have experienced the excitement of having their own submissions selected by the expert working groups after months of effort. They feel proud to know that they have contributed to defining standards that are used in many different products from a wide range of companies around the world, helping to transform people’s day to day lives.

Their colleague Yoshinori Nakagawa from Panasonic’s intellectual property department outlined Panasonic’s reasons for joining the Avanci marketplace. As the company’s business evolved and they exited the handset market in 2013, a pivot to monetising IP in part through licensing was a way to continue to share Panasonic’s innovations and fund future R&D, leveraging their team of expert inventors.

Auto makers are important partners for Panasonic across their business, and so they wanted to expand their licensing activity in a way that auto makers felt they could benefit from. Panasonic believes that Avanci offers an efficient way for auto makers to license the technologies used in their connected vehicles, while offering a fair return for patent owners such as Panasonic.

Panasonic also believes that the Avanci marketplace also offers a way for auto makers to reduce the risk of litigation from patent owners, bringing together many patent owners under one license at a fixed royalty rate, ensuring a level playing field. In addition, they feel that the Avanci patent assessment process, which uses a global network of independent evaluators to ensure essentiality of submitted patents, is another strong feature of the Avanci marketplace, also benefiting their wider licensing efforts beyond automotive and IoT.

Looking to the future, the team sees plenty of opportunity for Panasonic research and development. They expect to continue as an active contributor to communications standards development for 5G and beyond. In video codecs, an important technology for a company with so many market-leading video products, they see continuing research in H.266/VVC as fundamental to achieving more efficiencies in streaming more video content of ever higher resolution. And for a company with many automotive partners, the development of autonomous driving technologies for self-driving vehicles will also be important.

All this builds towards the Japanese government’s vision of Society 5.0. This reflects an ambition for the connected society of 2030 and beyond. which balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems through a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space. Enabling this vision will be technologies including self-driving vehicles, industrial robotics, and smart surveillance cameras, all of which will rely on leveraging data gathered from images and the environment to automate many everyday tasks. Panasonic intends to be an active participant in the R&D needed to realise the vision of Society 5.0, using its valuable IP to help it and others to deliver on the vision.

In conclusion, we asked each inventor for their advice to any young person considering a possible career in science or research and development. Iwata-san would enthusiastically encourage them in such a path, from her own experience it can be a very satisfying career, leveraging an enquiring mind to identify a range of alternatives and then working to identify which is best for all parties, whether individual users or society as a whole. Nishio-san agreed; he believes that there is not always one right answer to a research problem, and that R&D is a great career option for anyone who enjoys thinking about possible solutions to problems and applying critical thinking skills.

Panasonic Digital & AI Technology Center in Yokohama, Japan

As we pass the fourth anniversary of announcing our first Avanci licensee, it seems appropriate to reflect on how much has changed, for Avanci and the auto industry, during the last four years.

We launched Avanci in September 2016, as an independent marketplace with a vision to transform how patent licensing is done. In previous roles and at other companies, our team had experienced the ‘smartphone wars’ and believed things should, and could, be different for the burgeoning Internet of Things industry. It was a lofty ideal, building a more efficient approach to licensing essential connectivity patents for an era which would see the convergence of several different industries, including automotive and telecommunications. But we also believed that we had the right team of experienced, industry professionals to make it happen, and were encouraged by feedback from patent owners and auto makers alike.

The inclusion of 4G connectivity to vehicles has benefitted both consumers and automakers. For the consumer, this incredible technology powers their vehicle’s infotainment and emergency call systems. For the vehicle maker, the technology enables wireless diagnostics, data collection, and over-the-air updates to the vehicle’s systems. Automakers can also offer a range of connected services which can enhance their customer experience while earning them incremental revenue. Connected vehicles are an undeniable win-win for consumers and OEMs and serve as the precursor to tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles.

All of these connected features are underpinned by communications standards such as 3G, 4G and soon, 5G. These open standards are the result of billions of dollars invested in research and development over many years by dozens of innovative companies, largely from the telecommunications sector. They contribute their inventions to the standardization process to enable the widespread adoption that we have already seen in the smartphone world. In return, they seek a fair return from companies which utilize those standards in their products and who reap further benefits from that groundbreaking R&D. Automakers and others have then been able to create their own innovations, leveraging the communications technologies but without having had to invest in the R&D to develop them.

When BMW became our first licensee in December 2016, we had 11 patent owners in the Avanci marketplace and we published our fixed licensing rates of $15 per car, a one time payment for the lifetime of the car, to cover all of the current and future  2/3/4G essential patents of all of the patent owners in the marketplace.

Since then, I’m pleased to say that much has changed for Avanci. We’ve grown to have 25 automotive brands under license for their connected vehicles, which include not just cars but trucks, buses and even construction equipment. Our original patent owners have expanded their portfolios, and more patent owners have joined our marketplace, which now spans 47 patent owners, collectively responsible for the vast majority of 2G, 3G and 4G essential patents.

But over those years, one thing has remained constant. The 4G licensing rate of $15 per vehicle, paid once for the lifetime of the vehicle. Avanci’s value proposition is as straightforward now as it was then, but arguably even more compelling. An independent, one-stop marketplace for standard essential 2G, 3G and 4G connected car patents from many of the world’s most innovative companies, made available efficiently under one license at a low, fixed prices. Already, automotive brands responsible for more than 25 million connected vehicles have taken an Avanci license, recognizing the value the technology brings and the efficiency and affordability of the Avanci model.

It’s important to note that the Avanci rate represents a market driven solution, the result of lengthy engagement between patent owners and auto makers when we established the marketplace. Unlike a traditional licensor-run pool which typically sets rates unilaterally, Avanci worked with both licensors and licensees to arrive at its rates. I suspect that if we asked some of our 47 licensors, they might say that $15 is a little too low, and perhaps some of our 25 licensed brands would say the price is a little high. But, having been involved in hundreds of deals and many mediations, I can tell you that when both sides acknowledge that compromises were indeed made, the sweet spot has been found.

We now stand on the brink of 5G in the auto industry, which will ensure that drivers will have an even safer and more enjoyable driving experience. For automakers, 5G will unlock new revenue streams, create a closer connection to their customers, and allow them to stay ahead of their competitors as the automotive industry increases its focus on mobility rather than machines. As we continue discussions with a range of parties and prepare to launch our next program, licensing 5G connectivity for connected vehicles, we’d encourage all parties to talk to us about our solutions.

In the first of a series of articles, we spotlight the innovation of one of the patent owners in our Avanci marketplace, Datang Mobile (a subsidiary of CICT Mobile). This has been translated and adapted from an original article published by Huanqiu.com in China.

Avanci platform licensor CICT Mobile (a subsidiary of CICT Group) is a key force for 5G technology and industry in China and has been engaged in 5G research since 2012. Working with a range of industrial partners, CICT Mobile has targeted 5G application in industries including media integration, smart education, smart tourism, intelligent security, intelligent connected vehicles, smart manufacturing, smart power, smart healthcare, smart cities and smart industrial parks, as well as customized end-to-end 5G solutions. The company also works with leaders in relevant vertical industries and telecom operators to promote the rollout of popular 5G applications.

In a recent interview with Chinese media Huanqiu.com, CICT Mobile scientists Gao Xuejuan and Xing Yanping shared their views on 5G innovation, how they have contributed to the development of the telecom industry and how the Avanci platform is supporting the innovation process.

According to Gao, her achievements at CICT Mobile are down to the company’s development philosophy of building a “wireless communications engine” and its corporate values of innovation, market, integrity and responsibility. “I have been at CICT Mobile for 12 years, working on physical layer protocols since day one. I participated in the research and standardization of the LTE protocol versions ranging from R10 to R15. I’m currently researching 5G NR and have filed 260 patent applications as the first inventor.”

Xing shared that, “I joined CICT Mobile after graduating in 2007 and have been working on the standardization of the physical layer of mobile communications systems since then. I have participated in the standardization programs of several international and domestic standardization organizations, such as 3GPP and CCSA (China Communications Standardization Association).” She added that “CICT Mobile has innovation in its DNA. We recognize the important role of innovation in the development of the company and the entire industry, and we strive to create an environment that’s conducive for innovation.”

Back in the early days of 3G standardization, CICT Group, supported by industry authorities, drew on its years of research to present its proprietary TD-SCDMA technology, making it one of the three mainstream 3G standards, a breakthrough in mobile communications standards. This approach has also promoted the continued innovation, improvement, and standardization of 3G’s successors, 4G and 5G. To turbocharge the development of 5G in China, CICT Group has actively engaged in the formulation of global 5G standards. From the beginning of 3GPP’s 5G standardization work from 2015 to 2020, the company has submitted more than 10,000 technical documents on 5G technology and played a leading role in the approval of many important projects in 3GPP’s standardization efforts.

Datang Mobile (a subsidiary of CICT Mobile) has been working with Avanci’s IoT licensing platform since 2019. Commenting on Avanci, Gao said, “As an automotive licensing marketplace, Avanci provides a one-stop solution for telecom companies and automakers. It can further fuel the wide adoption of wireless communications technology in the auto sector. The cooperation between Datang Mobile and Avanci plays an exemplary role in the application of 5G standard technology in the IoT field. I think other IoT fields can also draw on this model.”  Xing added, “With its innovative approach to patent licensing, Avanci has attracted dozens of domestic and foreign telecom companies. It offers a one-stop solution for them and automakers, providing a great model for the application of cellular technology in IoT. This allows telecom companies to focus more on the development of the telecom technology itself. The implementors find it extremely inefficient to work with each telecom company separately. In fact, Avanci addresses the pain points of both sides. I think this is exactly why it can attract people to get on board. It can also fuel the wide adoption of wireless technology in the automotive sector.”

The industries and fields for vertical applications may be new to many telecom companies. If you want to go it alone, you will need to invest a lot of time and effort researching, negotiating and communicating. However, the Avanci marketplace resolves this problem for many telecom companies, acting as a bridge between them and automakers, which appeals to vendors in the communications field.