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.
Back in November, a Senior Designer from EE did a presentation on LTE-powered Emergency Services Network (ESN). There were some interesting slides in that. One is as shown in the picture above while the other is in the tweet below.
Interestingly this is something I have also looked in an earlier post here.
Meshing functionality has been tried a few times before, it does not work in every case. One of the successful cases is the use of mesh links in backhaul.
Parallel Wireless just put out a small video on Bring Your Own Coverage (BYOC - though BYOC can mean a lot of different things) as follows:
I have also blogged about Parallel Wireless Rural solution that uses mesh links too here.
*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Senior Director in Strategic Marketing. 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.
One of the many use cases for Small cells is for public safety communications. In case of emergency situations (earthquake, floods, terrorism, etc.) when the macro network is damaged or as it generally happens, the power supply is disrupted, small cells can quickly come in action and provide a coverage solution. This was discussed in an earlier post here.
Another scenario is when dedicated public safety coverage needs to be provided for hard to reach places or in a stadium kind if scenario, small cells be fill the void.
While in USA there is a dedicated band (Band 14 – 700MHz) available for use with public safety communications, most other countries do not rely on dedicated spectrum. In case there is no dedicated spectrum, there are still many different approaches to make sure that the personnel from emergency services can continue communication (as long as there is coverage available).
Parallel Wireless*, a Small Cells solution provider based in Nashua, NH, USA specializes in public safety and rural coverage solutions using small cells. The following slide pack contains some of their stories of deployments, demos and trials:
*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.
Back in early 2015, the then EE CEO Olaf Swantee said, "We will begin exploring 'Air Masts', essentially aerial small cells positioned in the sky above a hard-to-reach area, using either tethered balloons or unmanned craft, bridging the UK's transmission gap."
The vision has not changed a lot. I recently blogged about 'EE's vision of Ultra-Reliable Emergency Network'. If you look at the slide above you will notice temporary solutions include Air masts, UAV's and Network in a box (NIB).
Nokia recently did a trial with EE where they used a drone to carry a tiny base station to remote areas around Inverness. Weighing in at only 2 kg, the Nokia Flexi Zone Pico cell has all the punch of LTE in a very compact package, allowing 4G services to be provided wherever a drone can reach. High quality LTE voice calls between responders, video streaming and up to 150 Mbps data throughput were all achieved, with no need for a connection to an external core network.
While it doesn't exactly say the area that was covered, I would expect it to be able to do at least 1 km diameter to be effective in an emergency scenario.
According to a recent International Business Times article, US operator AT&T is trying something similar to deal with the struggle to provide enough wireless data are large venue events to please customers. The mobile operator says that drones known as "Flying Cell on Wings (COWs)" could make all the difference. The idea would be that the drone would be tethered to the ground so they would hover in one place, sort of like a portable hovering small cell.
Finally, Ericsson and China Mobile conduct world’s first 5G drone prototype field trial. In their recent press release it says:
In the trial, held in Wuxi in China’s Jiangsu province, a drone was flown using operator’s cellular network with 5G-enabled technologies and with handovers across multiple sites. In order to demonstrate the concept’s validity in a real-world setting, the handovers were performed between sites that were simultaneously in use by commercial mobile phone users. The potential use cases for this technology include mission-critical applications such as support for emergency services. However, end-to-end low latency needs to be guaranteed by the operator’s network to ensure the safety and reliability of such services.
I am sure we will be hearing more on this topic soon.
The Nepal disaster is another reminder that we need to be prepared in case of natural (or man-made) disasters and in times of emergencies.
ITU said that it has deployed emergency telecommunication equipment in Nepal following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the country on 25 April 2015. The emergency equipment includes 35 satellite mobile phones and 10 satellite Broadband Global Area Network terminals along with solar panels and laptops to support relief coordination efforts.
Satellite phones have been getting better with higher speeds. Thuraya Telecom has some interesting videos on Youtube, here is one that shows how to get good these phones have become:
Satellites can also be used to provide backhaul for small cells and can be installed relatively quickly.
Thaicom recently announced that they have sent equipment and engineers to help reconnect the region quickly. From a picture posted on their website, it looks like they are backhauling the small cells but I dont have any more details.
Drones (UAVs) and Baloons are another option for use in these scenarios but they need (expensive) receivers to be installed, which may be an issue.
One of the lessons learned after the Japanese twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami was the need to deploy more small cells.
According to Akiyoshi Ishiwata, a principal research analyst at Gartner in Tokyo covering Japan's mobile networks,'each of the operators are actively installing small cells and picocells in buildings, subways and indoor areas'. These miniature basestations improve indoor coverage, and improve a network's resilience by using more diverse power supplies and backhaul connections. Ishiwata said operators are considering using femtocells as the basis of a national machine-to-machine communications network that could also include earthquake sensors.
According to The Register, DoCoMo has tested blackout-proof hydrogen cell base station in Japan, ready for the next tsunami (see picture above).
Finally, I saw this tweet about Vodafone's emergency 'network in a back pack'
Vodafone prepares to launch emergency ‘network in a backpack’ in Nepal - 11kg mobile network which can be set up in just 10 minutes
Its not the first time Vodafone is helping out with a Small cell in a backpack. According to WSJ:
Vodafone Group said Monday its philanthropic division has created a mobile network in a backpack that can be deployed in 10 minutes, enabling aid workers to carry out their work in disaster zones.
The Instant Network Mini, which can be taken as hand luggage on commercial flights, can provide up to five concurrent calls within a radius of about 330 feet and enable text messages to be sent to thousands of people.
The 24-pound backpack is an innovation that follows on from the company’s original Instant Network—a portable network in a larger form that can be transported in four suitcases weighing 220 pounds. It offers a much wider operating radius of up to 3 miles.
Two original Instant Network kits were used in the Philippines during Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, enabling 1.4 million text messages and 443,288 calls in 29 days, Vodafone says.
The backpack, developed by Vodafone’s Spanish business, as well as Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies and nongovernment organization Télécoms Sans Frontières, provides a secure 2G GSM network, with a GSM base transceiver station connecting to a host network over a satellite connection.
A 2G (short for second-generation) network can support voice calls and text messages but can’t easily handle Web surfing or video, unlike the 3G and 4G networks in wide consumer use.
In African countries, having a network allows people to use services like M-Pesa, for instant money transfers to friends and family. Vodafone has also donated £100,000 to support relief efforts following Nepal earthquake that killed more than 3,300 people.
