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Recently, China Mobile and Huawei completed the world's first unmanned aerial vehicle 5G high-altitude base station emergency communication test. The high-altitude drone base station has a coverage of more than 6.5KM when flying at 200m altitude.

This test is the first case in the world to verify the coverage capability of a drone plus a 5G communication system, further verify the feasibility and implementation of the 5G high-altitude base station solution, and provide a better emergency communications solution for future earthquake relief work. Play a greater role in the scene.

As everyone knows, with the development of communication technology, drones have played a more and more important role in society, especially the arrival of 5G. Because of its large bandwidth, low latency, and multiple connections, it has given drones new Demand, it can play an important role in different business scenarios such as emergency communications, security, inspection, logistics, agriculture, and forestry, and enable all industries to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

China Mobile Research Institute, Xiong'an New Area Mobile United, Huawei and UAV company have continued their scientific research and innovation. After multiple verifications, new developments have been made in 5G high-altitude base station communications, and they have further broken the issue of coverage.

The pilot was conducted in Xiong'an New District, Hebei Province, and the feasibility of the scheme was fully verified using a tethered drone + 5G high-altitude base station. In terms of the test environment, many factors such as site selection, site survey, test route, airspace application, and weather need to be fully considered; in terms of networking, end-to-end system solutions need to be considered, of which:

Wireless base station solution: Huawei's leading 4 / 5G dual-mode BOOKRRU + custom omnidirectional antenna is adopted, which is smaller in size and lighter in weight, and is convenient to carry around. This solution is a major breakthrough in achieving 5G high-altitude signal coverage.

Transmission scheme: 4G has opened the path for the BBU to connect to the core network via a portable satellite backhaul device. 5G is currently connected to the SA core network through a ground link. After subsequent signal adaptation, the portable satellite backhaul path can be opened.

Core network solution: It adopts SA architecture and is connected to the core network of the Nanjing Region.

Power supply scheme: The power supply cable of the photoelectric system can achieve continuous coverage.

5G UAV High Altitude Base Station

After multiple verifications in different scenarios, the following goals were finally achieved: when the drone is powered on when it is not taking off, the test near-point achieves the signal strength of -68dBm, the uplink rate of 100Mbps, and the downlink rate of 600Mbps: the drone is powered on, high altitude When flying to 200m, it lasts for 4 hours and achieves a maximum coverage of 6.5km.

5G drone altitude test

The success of this pilot provided favorable technical support for the promotion of 5G high-altitude base station communication technology for drones. In the future, China Mobile will continue to work with Huawei to conduct in-depth research to further leverage the value and role of high-altitude base station communication technology to serve the community and benefit the people.