Huawei launches Autonomous Driving network solution

Source: Huawei. David Wang, Huawei's Executive Director (left), and Lu jointly launch the ADN solution during HUAWEI CONNECT 2020.

Huawei has released its Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) solution for the enterprise market. Introduced at HUAWEI CONNECT 2020, the solution brings intelligence to networks and integrates artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities at the network element (NE), network, and cloud layers. As such, it drives enterprise networks towards the autonomous driving era and empowers hyper-automated digital services and operations across industries.

According to Huawei, development and adoption of next-generation mobile Internet technologies, represented by the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, shows that we are approaching "an intelligent world where all things are connected, all things are sensing, and all things are intelligent". In the enterprise world, this means that networks will extend from office to production, change from static configurations to on-demand adjustments, and transform from single-domain management to network-wide collaboration, the company said. In addition, network boundaries are expected to expand, network quality will improve, while network operations and maintenance (O&M) will undergo a qualitative change.

Huawei's Global Industry Vision (GIV) 2025 predicts that 97% of large enterprises will be using AI by 2025. Enterprise networks that integrate AI capabilities can overcome the limitations of manual O&M efficiency, achieving autonomous driving with high levels of automation and intelligence. Once built, ADNs pave the way for enterprises' digital service innovation and agile operations.

Lu Hongju, President of Huawei's General Development Department, said: "Huawei plans to fully introduce AI into the connectivity field and build ADNs, thereby enabling networks to evolve from simple automation to hyper automation with human-machine collaboration. We also expect to achieve Level-3 conditional autonomous networks in three years, Level-4 highly autonomous networks in five years, and Level-5 fully-autonomous networks in seven to 10 years."

By integrating AI, Huawei ADN aims to build a self-organising, self-healing, and self-optimising autonomous network that can self-iterate and self-evolve. This futureproof network accelerates innovation of enterprise digital services, enables the ultimate experience with customer services, and implements intelligent O&M for enterprise networks.

• NE+AI: AI is introduced to NEs in order to create intelligent NEs. In this way, each NE and the entire network are endowed with more precise insights, processing, and inference execution.

• Network+AI: AI is used to reinvent the network management system (NMS). By building a digital twin of a network through an intelligent management and control system, the network can be controlled dynamically and managed in a closed-loop manner. Key enablers include automatic deployment, pre-event simulation, post-event verification, prevention and prediction, and proactive optimisation.

•Cloud+AI: Network AI training and model services are provided in the cloud. The software systems and AI models on devices and networks are continuously upgraded to boost autonomous driving capabilities. As a result, the network becomes more intelligent over time.

Huawei ADN consists of an intelligent campus, IP WAN, optical transport, and data centrer network devices; iMaster NCE and iMaster MAE (intelligent network management and control systems that integrate management, control, and analysis); and two major cloud service products (network AI service and a cloud-managed network service).