In this vignette of The 5G Factor, Ron Westfall and Steve Clint Wheelock provide their perspective on Qualcomm’s perspective that the future of AI is hybrid and its implications for 5G ecosystem development including 5G Advanced capabilities and applications.
The discussion spotlighted:
Qualcomm: The Future of AI is Hybrid. Qualcomm sees wireless and AI as two technologies that will synergistically fuel future innovations, including especially across the 5G ecosystem. For two generations now, we have seen Qualcomm use AI to enhance modem-RF system performance across its Snapdragon Modem-RF systems. We explore how AI is playing an integral role in driving end-to-end wireless system design throughout key areas such as energy savings optimization, network load balancing, and device mobility management and why the 5G Advanced era provides the foundation to deliver a standardized wireless AI framework to deliver new breakthrough applications.
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Transcript:
Ron Westfall: One recent development that is of top interest is Qualcomm sharing its views and how the future of AI is hybrid and put simply, as we know, AI computation is split where and when appropriate to improve experiences as well as boosting efficiency and just basically optimizing resources. Fundamentally as a result, wireless and AI are dual technologies that we can anticipate will synergistically fuel ecosystem wide innovation, they’re basically joined at the hip. And as a result I anticipate that AI’s massive potential can be used to solve many of the intricate challenges that we’re seeing in wireless system design. For instance, Qualcomm Snapdragon Modem-RF platforms have consistently adopted AI technology to augment their Modem-RF design for two generations now. And we can anticipate per four out of five generations more generations of that consistency. And as a result, I think we’re going to see improvements in areas like system energy savings, network load balancing and device mobility management.
One key takeaway is that AI is primed to impact really every part of end-to-end wireless system design. And so Clint, now from your view, where do you see AI making impacts, especially when it comes to advancing end-to-end wireless system designs?
Clint Wheelock: Well, I mean, Ron, you raised some great points already just in terms of the potential impact and the outsize role that AI is going to play in the continuing development of these systems and architectures. And there’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the vision of autonomous networks. I mean there’s been some great progress in the market, but in many ways that vision remains somewhat unrealized. But I’m seeing AI playing a really integral role in some of the top priority areas like optimizing distributed clouds by enabling more complete autonomous networks. It includes making predictive and preventive operational operations on a continuous basis and boosting the efficiency by reducing the network factor. And so in addition to that, I’m also seeing that AI can really optimize some of the more device centric experiences with more efficient beam management and channel feedback computation as well as some of the other enhanced capabilities it offers like positioning and RF sensing.
But I think it’s important to remember that AI is really transforming the design and the development of air interfaces and areas like waveform and coding and bringing new capabilities like dynamic channel adaptation to 5G networks as well.
Ron Westfall: Oh, I fully agree, Clint. And I anticipate that AI will make an impact across all these areas, it’s already basically developing in that direction. And I think one additional key area that AI is going to be very important is powering radio access network intelligent controllers also also known as RICs. And what that means is that 5G networks can more efficiently manage interference, schedule transmission and basically improve coordinate of multipoint operations. And we all understand that these are capabilities that the operators are going to require to basically scale 5G, certainly when it comes to implementing 5G standalone as well as 5G-Advanced further down the road.
And speaking of 5G-Advanced, this is where AI can play an even more integral role. Quite simply the 3GPP began a work in 5G-Advanced back in the end of 2021, and this is basically focused on developing a standardized wireless AI framework. And what this means is the applications such as multi-vendor channel state feedback can become a reality. For instance, Qualcomm is prototyping the company’s Cloud AI 100 platform along with the Snapdragon Modem-RF system across its 3.5 gigahertz MIMO testbed. And what this is highlighting is that the capacity gain in a multi-vendor system, that’s the reality out there, can be enabled by sequential learning that prevents proprietary knowledge sharing. And we all know how sensitive that is. That is basically a fundamental when it comes to 5G security and being able to more effectively transition to 5G standalone and 5G-Advanced.
Now what I’m really keen on is the advanced millimeter wave B management that Qualcomm is dedicating development resources toward. And what this is enabling is predictive beam management for both the base station and device and its 28 gigahertz millimeter wave testbed over in San Diego. And the implementation decreases the signaling overhead resulting in increased usable capacity and extended battery life, which is naturally a benefit for the entire ecosystem. I think we all fundamentally know that better battery life is something that is on everybody’s wishlist and this is something that’s going to play a key role in enabling just that capability.
Plus, Qualcomm is demonstrating centimeter level accuracy in its indoor industrial IOT testbed. And what this is doing, it’s overcoming the challenges of multi-path reflections. Now downlink RF fingerprinting with AI can outperform other positioning techniques, certainly the ones that are out there today. And as a result this can improve downlink time difference of arrival. And you take all these together, there’s certainly plenty to like, and this is I think all pointing toward why we’re going to see a lot more coming out of the 5G world contrary to some of the skepticism that’s out there because of the over-hyping of 5G that we talked about on our last webcast.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
Qualcomm’s 212S and 9205S: Empowering IoT Tracking in Hard-to-Reach Areas
Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
Clint brings over 20 years of market research and consulting experience, focused on emerging technology markets. He was co-founder and CEO of Dash Network, an integrated research and digital media firm focused on the CX market, which was acquired by The Futurum Group in 2022. He previously founded Tractica with a focus on human interaction with technology, including coverage of AI, user interface technologies, advanced computing, and other emerging sectors. Acquired by Informa Group, Clint served as Chief Research Officer for Informa’s research division, Omdia, with management and content strategy responsibility, formed by the combination of Tractica, Ovum, IHS Markit Technology, and Heavy Reading.
Clint was previously the founder and President of Pike Research, a leading market intelligence firm focused on the global clean technology industry, which was acquired by Navigant Consulting where he was Managing Director of the Navigant Research business.
Prior to Pike Research, Clint was Chief Research Officer at ABI Research, a New York-based industry analyst firm concentrating on the impact of emerging technologies on global consumer and business markets.
Clint holds a Master of Business Administration in Telecommunications Management from the University of Dallas and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Washington & Lee University.
