5G is here, and the consumption and unit price of communication circuit boards are expected to incre

Communication is the main downstream application field of circuit boards. According to Prismark's data, communication accounted for 27.30% of the total PCB output value in 2017, which is a major downstream application field of PCB. PCBs are widely used in various aspects such as wireless networks, transmission networks, data communications and fixed-line broadband, and are usually products with higher added value such as backplanes, high-frequency high-speed boards, and multilayer boards. 5G is the next-generation mobile communication network, and there will be a large amount of infrastructure construction demand by then, which is expected to greatly boost the demand for communication boards.

　　 The number of 5G base stations is expected to increase substantially. The peak rate of 4G is 100Mbps to 1Gbps, while 5G will provide peak bandwidth above 10Gbps, 1ms delay and ultra-high-density connection, mobility up to 500km/h, and traffic density up to 10Mbps/m2. At present, China's three major operators have entered the stage of rapid 5G construction. Pilots have been launched on 5G scale testing and application testing. Localities have drawn up timetables for 5G coverage and accelerated infrastructure construction to achieve the goal of large-scale commercial use in 2020.

　　 As 5G requires massive connections, the number of base stations in the 5G era will increase significantly compared to the 4G era. As of the end of 2017, the number of 4G macro base stations in China has reached about 3.6 million, and the 5G macro base station plan of the three major operators is 1.5 times that of 4G, and the total number reaches about 5.4 million. 2019-2023 will be the peak of 5G base station construction. Expect.

　　 5G will also drive the construction of base stations. Since 5G communication uses a high frequency spectrum, it will produce a greater degree of attenuation during the propagation process, so it is necessary to use base stations as a supplement to macro base stations to achieve ultra-dense networking. According to CCID Consulting's forecast, the number of 5G base stations is expected to be 4 to 5 times that of macro base stations, corresponding to approximately 25 million base stations.

　　 5G will bring major changes to the structure of base stations, and the amount and unit price of communication PCBs are expected to increase substantially. In the 4G era, a standard macro base station is mainly composed of three parts: a baseband processing unit BBU (Base Band Unit), a radio frequency processing unit RRU (Remote Radio Unit), and an antenna. Since the 10Gbps transmission capacity of the traditional CPRI (public radio interface connecting RRU and BBU) is not enough in the 5G era, in order to reduce the transmission bandwidth, the 5G base station structure needs to be reconstructed.

In 5G base stations, due to the need to use Massive MIMO antennas, part of the BBU functions are combined with RRUs and antennas to form a new active antenna unit AAU (Active Antenna Unit), and the remaining BBUs are split into CU-DUs Two-level architecture, where DU (Distributed Unit) is a distributed unit that is responsible for meeting real-time requirements and has some underlying baseband protocol processing functions; CU (Centralized Unit) is an intermediate unit with non-real-time wireless high-level protocol processing functions.