U-Joy Cities：China Unicom Guangdong and Huawei 5G MetaAAU Marine Coverage Verification

Yangjiang City, located in the southwest coast of Guangdong Province, has the coastline of 458.6 kilometers long. From east to west, there are a number of large and small ports dotted. It has built the country's largest marine pasture demonstration area, with more than 6,000 fishing vessels. Yangjiang is famous in Guangdong and China for its outstanding marine economic endowment advantages. Consequently, efficient 5G network coverage in marine area is essential and important for people living there.

Figure 1: U-Joy Cities：Guangdong Unicom 5G MetaAAU Marine Coverage Verification

As part of the “U-Joy Cities” program, China Unicom Guangdong cooperated with Huawei to take full advantage of the large bandwidth of the 3.5 GHz frequency band in verifying the 5G MetaAAU (32T32R) ELAA (Extreme Large Antenna Array) marine coverage solution in Yangjiang, in terms of the coverage and user experience improvement capability.

Field tests showed that 5G commercial terminals can provide stable and continuous network experience of more than 400 Mbps within 30 km offshore. In addition, based on 2.1 GHz+3.5 GHz dual-band resources, innovative features such as 5G super uplink and downlink carrier aggregation were applied. In this way, 5G commercial UEs can still maintain the access capability of 60 Mbps in the downlink and 2 Mbps in the uplink within 61 km of the sea. It achieves the goal of a) excellent 5G coverage in coastal area; b) 5G stable signal in offshore area; and c) 5G connection well in the high seas.

At present, the digital fishing vessel management platform jointly developed by China Unicom Guangdong has become the efficient means for city government to ensure the safety of fishing vessels, as well as the management of them during the fishing suspension, typhoon prevention, and flood prevention. In the future, the mobile network access capability provided by 5G full coverage in sea areas will enable the push of HD video policy regulation announcements in real-time. In addition, fishing people can use 5G networks to carry out live webcast services to increase their income.

Furthermore, Guangdong Yangjiang is leading in the development of offshore wind power resources in China. Now an offshore wind power industry chain according to the international standard are being built there. China Unicom Guangdong now is cooperating with wind power enterprises in offshore wind power projects. Through the collaborative coverage of 5G networks along the coastal line with the base station on the wind power platforms, 5G applications for the entire process of offshore wind power O&M can be developed and provide effective network support for the offshore wind power industry in a smart and more efficient way.

This content is sponsored by Huawei.