Last year I wrote about KT's Skyship platform. I thought it may be worth revisiting now that the vision is slowly turning into reality. There were some videos that were recorded at MWC and immediately following it. All of them are embedded in the playlist below. They will give an idea of what KT is going to use the Skyship platform for.
A presentation by Riku Jäntti, Aalto University on PriMO-5G - Virtual Presence in Moving Objects through 5G also added some more details on the 5G Skyship search and rescue application. The presentation is available here.
Couple of months back, Altaeros announced "world’s first commercial aerial cell tower". This is a contentious point as the UK MNO, EE has already claimed "World’s first commercial use of Helikite ‘air mast’ technology showcased with 360° live stream over 4G" back in 2017. While we can argue that EE's aerostat was a Helikite while this is something different, they are both aerial cell towers.
The SuperTower uses a proven aerostat platform, combined with innovative automation and control software, to deploy radios and antennas over four times higher than traditional cell towers allowing carriers to efficiently cover substantially more area than traditional towers. The ST200 was tested with six high capacity Ericsson 4G LTE radios and three highgain Matsing lens antennas. During initial testing users were able to stream high-definition video at distances well beyond the reach of a typical cell site, even in the hills and forests of New England. Altaeros is initially deploying SuperTowers in partnership with carriers in the US, with plans to quickly expand internationally.
The website specifies: The Altaeros SuperTower is designed to meet this challenge. Each SuperTower deploys radios and antennas over 800 feet above ground level. Greater height and flexibility mean a single SuperTower replaces fifteen regular cell towers at 60% lower cost, shifting the rural networks from a loss-making endeavor to a growth engine for carriers.
Mobile World Live provides some more details about it's trials:
Ben Glass, CEO and CTO of the company, told Mobile World Live (MWL) the company is testing the system with “some of the big carriers that are household names”, with a view to deploying it in the latter part of 2019 and early 2020. The executive did not confirm which operators are testing the technology. However, applications filed with the Federal Communications Commission show it conducted FDD-LTE tests in PCS spectrum and more recently trialled TD-LTE at 2.5GHz. A Sprint representative told MWL it allowed Altaeros to use some of its 2.5GHz spectrum for the latter testing, but did not confirm whether it is evaluating the technology for itself. Verizon flat denied it is involved: AT&T and T-Mobile US had not responded at the time of publishing.
Here is their video providing more details:
The website specifies potential applications for Altaeros’ technology include:
What if a tether breaks loose? The Altaeros SuperTower has three load-bearing tethers. If one of the tethers breaks loose, the remaining tethers will reel in the shell. In the very unlikely scenario that all three tethers break loose, an automatic vent will begin to release helium to allow the SuperTower to slowly descend to the ground. Similar safety features have been reliably demonstrated on hundreds of existing aerostats. How fast can the SuperTower be deployed? Once on site, the Altaeros SuperTower can be inflated and deployed in a few days. Our system does not require a crane or cement foundation for its installation.
In disaster recovery kinds of use case, air masts like these may need to be deployed for a few days to weeks. It is essential that they can reach their destination quickly. Having reached their destination, they also need to be deployed in a few hours. On the other hand there are many other scenarios where these kinds of air masts, as long as they can stay up for months, be useful for something or other. We look forward to hearing more about them in future.
One of the announcements from Huawei that seem to have missed most of the articles, magazines & analysts is their SkySite Drone with a 5G Base Station and a RRU called '5G Book'.
Picture Source: Various, see references at the bottom
While Huawei calls SkySite as a drone with integrated 5G base station, I am assuming that the BBU (or CU in 5G) is located on the ground. The tethering is used for providing power as well as fiber for communication between the CU/DU on the ground as the '5G Book' RRU on the drone.
EE was the pioneer of these tethered drones (called Airmasts initially and E.M.M.A. later) as you can see from this video by ThinkSmallCell here.
The drone is designed for emergency coverage after a site failure due to technical issues or natural disasters like earthquakes or floods. The drone weighs just 7 kgs. Tethering allows the drone to be up for a few days. From my past experience, the limiting factor was the motors on the drone getting hot. It can still remain in air between 2-4 days.
We're currently at @Huawei's pre #MWC19 briefing. please excuse the long distance photography - here's a look at their #drone mounted Book RRU #5G cell which can provide 20-30km2 of coverage while flying at 100 metres. Weighs only 7kg. pic.twitter.com/B1cRJrePu8
In his introduction, President of Carrier Business Group Ryan Ding focused on the vendor’s growing role as a provider of humanitarian communications solutions by unveiling the new Huawei 5G Skysite. Using a new ‘Book’ radio unit weighing only 7 kilos, 5G Skysite is 40% lighter than the outgoing 4G Skysite. The 5G Skysite antenna is supported 100 meters above ground by a drone and the entire base station can be set up in five minutes, to give between 30-40 square kilometres signal coverage.
Telefónica has today presented in a real environment the applications in rescue and supervision of the miniaturization of a 4G mobile network with a portable backpack of less than 3kg. which provides voice and data coverage to a group of people in a specific area.
This innovation project, called LTE Nano and announced at the 2017 Mobile World Congress , is one of the world's smallest deployments of a 4G standalone network as it runs on hardware weighing just 40 grams. It is also a significant step in the advances that the market is making in the development of portable network products very useful in rescue, emergency, retail, logistics, hospitals or offices, among many others.
Specifically, Telefónica has carried out demonstrations in Real of the application of portable networks 4G in rescue and supervision of critical infrastructures in Buitrago de Lozoya. In both, a LTE Nano backpack has been used that has allowed to deploy in a matter of minutes a network of 4G communications to which a dron has been connected with capacity to transmit video through LTE and several smartphones and tablets with transmission of voice and data.
In the case of rescue work, the 4G portable backpack has provided coverage of voice and data communications to a rescue group. A dron with an HD camcorder has streamed what was seen during the flight and has transmitted it to the devices of the operations in real time by the 4G provided by the backpack. In this way, for example, the location of a missing person is facilitated and accelerated in places that are not accessible.
The same service can be provided in the supervision of infrastructures that are difficult to access, both in communications and in any other industrial field, involving tasks of a certain complexity and risk and time consuming. In this case, the use of a 4G dron has been shown for the monitoring of the old satellite communications monitoring antennas of Telefónica in Buitrago de Lozoya which, with its 30 meters in diameter and placed more than 40 meters high on a infrastructure of several hundred tons, pose a challenge of supervision because of its complexity and risk when an operator has to perform this task manually.
The LTE Nano solution has been developed in collaboration with the British company Quortus, which is the technology provider that provides the 4G virtual network software solution capable of operating in such small scale equipment.
On the other hand, the scenarios of using a dron transmitting video through 4G have been developed in collaboration with Accenture Digital , one of the first companies to collaborate with Telefónica in the development of innovative services that operate on 4G portable networks.
Here is a video released alongside with the text above. I wish it had a bit more detail.
In the past, when earthquake and floods used to take out mobile connectivity, satellite used to be the only way forward. See here for instance for use of satellite connectivity in Nepal and Japan. I really like the Network in a backpack from Vodafone picture in that post.
Having said that, things have moved on in the last few years. In my earlier post I discussed about Telefonica's network in a box that weighs just 40 grams. This can be deployed in conjunction with a drone or a Helikite and you have a self-contained coverage. EE is taking this further and plans to connect Scotland using Airmasts and Droneways.
In the recent floods in Peru, Telefonica worked with Google Loon team to to re-connect the service and re-establish mobile communications, which are particularly crucial in such dire circumstances. According to their blog:
Telefónica and Project Loon brought basic Internet connectivity across more than 40,000 Km2, providing over 160 GB worth of data –enough to send and receive roughly 30 million WhatsApp messages, or 2 million emails.
The Google Loon team have their own blog posts on this topic here and here.
The picture on the top is a modified picture from Project Loon that explains how the Loon's work. Fundamentally the working is sort of the same, regardless of the technology you use. As I explained in my other post here, when you use Helikites for example and create a mesh network its similar to the Loon's using laser for connectivity between them. All technologies need backhaul to connect to the outside world and access to connect to the end user.
The popularity of drones and balloons have made it possible to try and come up with innovative solutions for providing connectivity, surveillance and many other use cases. I have talked in detail about the UK operator EE's attempt to use Airmasts (which are now called E.M.M.A. - Emergency Mobile Mast Aid) and connect rural Scotland using Drones and Helikites.
In my Small Cells at MWC report, I talked about how there were many operators, vendors, etc. showing different things they were doing with drones and recently in my posts talked about Verizon's 'flying cell-site' and AT&T's 'Flying COWs'.
I only looked briefly at Telefonica's announcement about the LTE Nano.
This innovation, an evolution of the former project “LTE in a Box” presented at the MWC2015 that brought all the benefits of private critical LTE communications to the corporate world, will allow to bring the same advantages to new scenarios where small scale, low consumption and portability are paramount. LTE Nano runs on a 40 grams SBC (Single Board Computer), on a Quad Core Cortex™-A53 processor and 2GB of RAM. For the LTE Nano Project, Telefónica has integrated several components, one of the most essential being the EdgeCentrix virtual Enhanced Packet Core (vEPC) solution from Quortus, one of the most efficient and scalable software implementations of a mobile network functionality, able to run the essential elements of both 4G and 3G networks, including voice and data communications, with minimum HW requirements.
The most eye catching use of LTE Nano is for the rescue teams. An autonomous and portable LTE solution in a backpack, providing critical LTE communications in isolated places with no pre-existing coverage and difficult Access.
A drone with an LTE enabled camera transmitting video.
In addition, LTE Nano could be used to access retail intranets, though apps could do this job much better I think and
private LTE communications for small offices. Here I remain to be convinced that this scenario will not be superseded by WiFi calling, etc. All these scenarios include the well-known Quality of Service provided by LTE networks in licensed spectrum which guarantee the absence of interferences and the security of communications, typical characteristics of regulated environments.
The presentation on LTE Nano is available here and a video from MWC is below (in Spanish):
With the 4G small cells making it to the market in 2015/16, Mansoor brought in the Ayan Ghosh (a.k.a. "Droneman") to lead the airmast project. While Parallel Wireless (PW) and Nokia had been actively working with EE, innovative solutions require innovative partners. This led to finding some very innovative solution providers, some of them based in the UK. Allsopp Helikites based for example is based in Salisbury who specialise in balloon deployments. Other partners included Voltserver with their smart digital power, Avanti with the satellite, UVue with their drones, Parallel Wireless with the Mesh 4G radio and Nokia with Smallcells were introduced to each other for collaboratively coming up with a solution.
The Helikite and Drone solutions are designed to provide temporary coverage not only in case of emergency but also in case of floods, power failures, fiber breaks, etc. They can also supplement the existing coverage in case of big festivals like Glastonbury, etc. In fact one of the example given by Marc Allera, CEO of EE was that anyone climbing a mountain where there may be a limited coverage can order 'coverage on demand' in future.
As part of the team to convert these innovative ideas into reality, we (Parallel Wireless) focused on small cell on the helikite with with tethered power, in-band backhaul (IBBH) and mesh link. The picture below will clarify what we have achieved.
In our case, the small cells worked in tandem with the HetNet Gateway (HNG) can self-configure and self-optimize the power, coverage, etc.
A more detailed slide from Mansoor Hanif's presentation at the Facebook TIP Summit can be seen below.
In fact to make this a success, there were many different components. Voltserver providing digital power that allows a thin cable to run along with the tether and power the small cell and other equipment on the Helikite. Having power to the helikite ensures that it can stay up for 2 - 4 weeks before being brought down to refill helium. Without this power source, 2 x 24V battery would last maybe an hour or two.
The Helikite itself by Allsopp helikites which are unique in their own way. A whitepaper by Aerostats All Australia (AAA) provides a nice comparison of different Aerostats and shows that Helikite performs better than other types, mainly in windy scenarios.
In addition to the Parallel Wireless solution, Nokia showed drones with and without the power tether and also satellite based backhaul, powered by Avanti.
From EE's press release: EE’s breakthroughs in developing innovative aerial solutions have been achieved with the support of the most innovative partners from the mobile industry and beyond: Nokia has provided world class, lightweight, compact and portable Flexi Zone small cell basestation solutions; Parallel Wireless has delivered a unique technology with self-configuring and self-optimising basestation, in-band backhaul capability, and network meshing techniques; Avanti has enabled a fast, reliable satellite backhaul connection; VoltServer has provided touch-safe and flexible Digital Electricity power over data cable/tether; uVue has evolved drone designs to meet the specific requirements of providing mobile coverage; and Allsopp Helikites has provided the ‘Helikite’ solution that makes a stable, high altitude service possible.
The press release also notes that "EE’s tethered and powered mobile ‘air mast’ solutions are currently in patent-pending status."
Here is an interesting video from EE on how air masts will work:
My favourite picture is one posted by Mansoor Hanif on Linkedin after the first demo at BT, Madley.
*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Solutions Architect. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.
