Whether RedCap can change the industrial structure and become the focus of adapting to the 'mid-range IoT market'

As a lightweight 5G technology, RedCap has attracted much attention from the market since its birth.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Promoting the Evolution and Application Innovation and Development of 5G Lightweight (RedCap) Technology (Draft for Comments)", proposing that by 2025, the comprehensive capabilities of the 5G RedCap industry will be significantly improved, new products and new models They continue to emerge, the scale of integrated applications increases, and security capabilities are simultaneously enhanced. Among them, cities at or above the county level across the country have achieved large-scale 5G RedCap coverage, and the number of 5G RedCap connections has increased by tens of millions.

RedCap is mainly used in 5G medium-to-high-speed IoT scenarios, with the rate between eMBB, NB-IoT, and eMTC. This meets the industry's demand for low-cost 5G connections, while also expanding the space for 5G commercial applications and changing the IoT industry landscape

Regarding RedCap, we need to figure out what it is and how it will affect the future IoT industry landscape. What does the emergence of RedCap mean to the public? Today, let us follow "China Science and Technology Information" to explore the answer

RedCap is the most representative technology in the R17 standard

As a lightweight 5G technology, RedCap has attracted much attention from the market since its birth. In June 2022, at the 96th 3GPP RAN meeting held in Budapest, the 5G R17 standard was officially announced to be frozen, marking the official completion of the second evolution version of 5G standard. As the last version of the first phase of the 5G standard, the freezing of the R17 standard brings stronger technical guarantee to 5G.

To understand RedCap, you need to know several concepts about 5G in advance. The first is R17. R17 in 5G refers to the 5G Release-17 standard, which is the third major version of the global 5G NR standard. 5GNR is a global 5G standard based on OFDM's new orifice design, and R17 expands the 5G technology foundation in terms of network coverage, mobility, power consumption and reliability, and expands 5G applications to new use cases and deployments mode and network topology. Theoretically, the R17 standard mainly includes three features, namely, continuous enhancement of commercial performance, improvement of scenario-based application capabilities, and network optimization

Since the release of 8, mobile broadband (MBB/eMBB) rates have continued to grow, and 3GPP has also introduced a variety of cellular IoT technologies such as LTE Cat 1, Cat 1 bis, eMTC, NB-IoT, EC-GSM and so on. These cellular IoT technologies reduce the complexity, cost, size, power consumption and other indicators of terminals and modules through varying degrees of "functional tailoring", thereby "tailoring" according to different IoT needs

The most representative technology introduced in the R17 version is 5NR Lite, also known as reduced capability, or RedCap, the full English name is Reduced Capability, the Chinese literal translation is "reduced capability", that is, a lightweight 5G terminal , Mainly targeted at applications whose bandwidth, power consumption, cost and other requirements are between eMBB and LPWA. In order to reduce the cost of NR terminals, Redcap supports FR1 20MHz and FR2 100MHz bandwidth, and the number of receiving antennas is reduced to as low as 1 or 2, the modulation order is also reduced from the original FR1 256QAM required to FR1 64QAM.

Tailor-made to suit the “mid-range IoT market”

Some data predict that by the end of 2027, the number of global 5G connections will approach 6.8 billion. However, most connections are concentrated on smartphones, and large-scale 5G Internet of Things (IoT) has not yet been realized. The reasons behind this are mainly divided into two aspects.

On the one hand, one of the main reasons for the slow progress of 5G applications in the field of Internet of Things is that traditional technologies have been able to work well in many situations. In the past, IoT devices have had multiple connectivity methods, including WiFi, LPWAN, Bluetooth, LTE and 5G. This may look diverse, providing manufacturers and customers with a variety of options, but the reality is that the market is fragmented and interoperability is poor, resulting in slower than expected growth

On the other hand, the mid-range IoT market cannot be "taken care of". 5G defines three major scenarios: eMBB, uRLLC and mMTC. uRLLC targets "high-end" IoT application scenarios, while mMTC targets "low-end" IoT application scenarios. Who will solve the gap in the "mid-range IoT market"? The answer now is RedCap. The purpose of launching RedCap is to hope that IoT networks can be applied to more locations and devices with the help of 5G deployment scale. Since many IoT devices have fewer features, RedCap will more easily address issues such as low power consumption and durability that are priorities for device manufacturers.

The introduction of lightweight RedCap technology will accelerate the large-scale application of 5G in vertical industry markets and personal consumption markets. In the industry market, RedCap technology rationally tailors 5G terminal functions to effectively balance the industry Customers have two-way requirements in terms of cost reduction and performance improvement. In addition to reducing the cost problems faced by 5G applications, the more important aspect is to realize its value and fully integrate it into UC in various industries. This will ultimately promote Operators have truly completed the transformation of their role in the era - from "Operator's Internet of Things" to "Operator of Internet of Things".

The commercial development of RedCap is faster than expected, but it will not become popular quickly

Currently, RedCap’s commercial development should be faster than expected. According to previous industry estimates, the release of RedCap will probably wait until 2024, but this expectation has obviously been exceeded. Behind this is the support of capital and policy.

On August 29, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the "Notice on Promoting the Evolution and Application Innovation and Development of 5G Lightweight (RedCap) Technology (Draft for Comment)", which aims to promote the evolution of 5G Lightweight (RedCap) technology, Product research and development and industrialization, vigorously promote the large-scale development of 5G applications.

At the same time, relevant companies are also working hard to prepare for the commercialization of RedCap. In terms of chips, Zhilian plans to start mass production of 5G RedCap high-precision and low-power positioning chips in the third quarter of this year. In terms of modules, Quectel has officially released the Rx255C series 5G modules in early 2023, and designed two versions, RG255C and RM255C, for the global market. Lierda is also developing a RedCap module with digital transmission function and plans to release engineering samples at the end of this year

As lightweight 5G, RedCap will occupy an important position in the future public mobile communication system. RedCap will appear in "medium-speed IoT" applications and scenarios such as industrial sensors, surveillance cameras, and wearable devices. figure. However, due to the influence of technology, market and other aspects, this technology will not be popularized rapidly in a short period of time. Experts believe that the performance of RedCap will be critical next, and they expect this technology to be used in the existing Internet of Things industry pattern. Take a unique path.

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