China Unicom held the establishment ceremony of the “High-Frequency Communication Joint Innovation Laboratory” at the China National Convention Center on October 16, 2020. Nearly 30 units in the industry, academia, and research areas such as the State Key Lab of Rail Traffic Control & Safety (Beijing Jiaotong University), China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China Unicom Research Institute, as well as Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, GSMA, Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, Nokia Bell, Datang Mobile, Purple Mountain Laboratories and Qualcomm attended this establishment ceremony. Group photo of the establishment ceremony, Prof. Zhangdui Zhong of the State Key Lab of Rail Traffic Control & Safety (Beijing Jiaotong University), Zhiqin Wang, vice president of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Hongwu Li, president of China Unicom Research Institute attended this ceremony.

On behalf of Beijing Jiaotong University, Professor Zhangdui Zhong expressed his warm congratulations on the establishment of the “High-Frequency Communication Joint Innovation Laboratory”. He thought that high-frequency communication plays an important role to promote the integration and innovation of 5G and industrial internet, smart cities, and smart transportation. Additionally, high-frequency communication is also an important part of advancing 5G vertical industries and driving the digital transformation and upgrading of the economy and society. Especially for the rail traffic industry, the development of high-frequency communication technologies that integrate radar, positioning, and communication will become an important direction to support the real-time transmission of massive data in rail traffic scenarios and promote the intelligent development. Professor Zhangdui Zhong gave the speech at the establishment ceremony.

High-frequency communication has rich spectrum resources and unique characteristics, which has great advantages in meeting the needs of various applications in major scenarios and the higher capacity and transmission data rate requirements of future wireless communication systems. In recent years, Beijing Jiaotong University has carried out fruitful research work in the field of high-frequency communication, built a high-performance ray tracing platform for high-frequency communication, and contributed to the IEEE terahertz point-to-point communication physical layer standard and the IEEE terahertz wireless channel standard model. With the support of the Ministry of Education, the National Railway Administration, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and other departments, further exchange and cooperation between Beijing Jiaotong University and other international research organizations (such as the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Germany, and the European Railway Research Alliance) have been carried out.

Compared with low-frequency bands, millimeter waves and terahertz have more complicated propagation mechanisms and characteristics. Therefore, the development of high-frequency communication, especially for high-speed mobility, not only encountered a series of basic theoretical problems, including channel modeling, key technologies, chip devices design, systems design, and network architecture but also encountered some bottlenecks need to be broken. In the future, Beijing Jiaotong University will make major contributions to the “High-Frequency Communication Joint Innovation Laboratory” and the high-frequency communication technologies in China.