This article is from the WeChat public account: made (ID: xingshu100) < span class = "text-remarks">, author: Sunsong Lin, head of FIG screenshots from a new media Daily
We have all experienced a very special Spring Festival this year. First of all, we must pay the highest respect to the medical workers who are still struggling at the front line of the epidemic, and at the same time, noble the workers struggling in various industries Respect. This epidemic has brought great changes to our work and life. Everyone has experienced working and living online. We have become highly dependent on a developed communication network.
1. After three days of deployment, how did the Vulcan Mountain Communication Network achieve it?
In the Vulcan Mountain application scenario, from construction to use, the staff is relatively dense, and a large number of people have a very high demand for information and communication in a short time. 5G deployment can take advantage of it to better serve this scenario. Its large bandwidth and high-rate technology are relatively mature, and it also provides good communication guarantee for more online medical applications later. The netizens are “cloud supervisors” at home, which is mainly due to the on-site 5G video surveillance.
Another problem is that the penetration rate of 5G mobile phones is not very high. What should I do? Therefore, on-site expansion and optimization of 3G and 4G are also performed. 5G CPE is used indoors. This is a device that converts 5G signals into indoor signals. This can alleviate the need for indoor data communications.
Progress of Vulcan 5G deployment:
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January 23 decided to open the Vulcan Hill Hospital;
On January 24, in the thirtieth year of the throne, hundreds of excavators arrived at the site and began to level the land;
On January 25, the first day of the new year, Vulcan Mountain Hospital officially started construction, and the first 5G network was also opened that night;
On January 26, the first day of the second year of the Chinese New Year, the first model house was completed, and the 3G, 4G new, expanded, and optimized networks of Vulcan Mountain Hospital were opened that night;
On the morning of February 2, Vulcan Mountain Hospital was officially put into use.
In the deployment of Vulcan Mountain Hospital, a total of seven new 5G base stations and one 4G base station were added, three 4G base stations were expanded, and two 3G base stations were optimized. All 3, 4, and 5G base stations used the highest Network capacity configuration to ensure the highest communication quality. At the same time, more than ten office dedicated lines have been laid and a dedicated network has been opened. During the entire live broadcast of Vulcan Mountain, 5G was mainly used as the network support.
Communication network construction is not as simple as adding an antenna. From a technical point of view, there are at least three departments: the network construction department, the network operation and maintenance department, and the network optimization department. Externally, design institutes, system integrators, equipment providers, and construction departments are also required to complete. So it is a relatively large and complicated systems engineering.
Communication network construction is a systems project
For the convenience of explanation, I will make some simplifications, which are mainly divided into three parts: survey and design, deployment and construction, debugging and optimization. All work was completed in two days.
The first block, survey and design.
We must first choose a suitable site. Maybe you can see some houses on the street with some base station antennas, and some also have iron towers. If you see 3G, 4G, and 5G base stations on your building, you have to be glad that the quality of the building is very high. Because the operator must evaluate the building when constructing the base station, if the quality of the building is not good, it cannot be built.
The weight of these towers and batteries is very heavy. Why is there a battery? Because communication is a system with high requirements for reliability, in general, we rely on electricity such as 220V-380V to support it. But we will also consider what to do if the mains power fails. At this time, communication can’t be stopped, just like when we had a fixed telephone before, water and power were cut off, but the fixed telephone can still make calls. This means that the communication system has its own independent power system. We are a communication engineering major, and there was a special class about communication power before. It is different from our mains.
The construction of 3G, 4G, and 5G, in addition to the city power, needs to consider a sure-fire strategy. What if the city power fails for various reasons? We can use batteries, what if we run out of batteries? We also have a third set of solutions, using oil generators to generate electricity. So the design of communication is based on this reliability to ensure the smooth flow of communication.
The second block, deployment and construction.
Major materials are needed for deployment and construction, such as antennas, equipment, network cards, etc. of base stations. Logistics is now very developed, and many industries have zero inventory. But the communications industry is not, why? I just mentioned that the communications industry is a highly reliable industry. How do you provide this reliability? By redundancy, many things will be prepared. Like the Vulcan Mountain Hospital, the order was issued on January 23, and all the materials were ready on the 24th. Huawei and other suppliers providing equipment were very powerful.
In addition to material redundancy, a redundant design is also required when designing and constructing lines. For example, Beijing to Wuhan is definitely not a one-way link. It must be physically double-loop. This means,If one communication line is disconnected due to various reasons, there will definitely be another communication line that can guarantee smooth traffic.
The third block is optimized for debugging.
Finally, you have to debug and optimize. For example, after the construction of the base station of Vulcan Mountain, the on-site staff immediately performed a test. The 5G network of Vulcan Mountain has a field test of 921 MBPS and a 133 MBPS. What does downside mean? It is called downlink from base station to mobile phone, and uplink from mobile phone to base station. Therefore, there is no problem in transmitting four-channel ultra-high-definition video at the scene. This is definitely not achieved by 4G, and 4G transmission may be more difficult along the way.
After completing these three steps, the physical architecture of the entire wireless base station is basically over. Finally, a video is loaded. This video was collected and uploaded for testing by the field staff’s 5G mobile phone. Later, it was replaced with a fixed HD camera. The video signal was first transmitted to the background video server and pushed to the cloud. The three major operators are Tianyi Cloud, Migu Cloud, and Woo Cloud. Then in conjunction with CCTV, it was opened through the platform of CCTV, so everyone also saw the construction site of the Vulcan Mountain Hospital at about 7 o’clock on the evening of the 26th of the New Year, and started the “cloud supervisor”.
Vulcan Mountain Hospital under construction
2. Weather, time, construction site, three major problems in 5G deployment of Vulcan Mountain
What I just talked about is the trilogy of traditional communication network architecture construction. Under normal circumstances, the construction of 5G from scratch is roughly a week. However, during the construction of Vulcan Mountain, it had its own unique difficulties. Today I will focus on three:
First, short time.
The seven-day work is now complete within three days. The first is the lack of personnel. Many people go home during the Spring Festival. It is not easy to recruit people. Communication construction workers are the same as doctors and medical staffs. They are all highly professional work, not just grabbing one person and doing it. The second is materials. As mentioned earlier, Huawei is very powerful. The material problems have been solved by various means.
Second, the situation on the construction site is too complicated.
This is not like usual construction. We go to the building for exploration, design, simulation, and commissioning. There are more than 100 excavators working at the site at the same time, power supply, water supply, sewage treatment, etc. are all under construction at the same time, so it is likely to happen, the optical cable was routed in the morning, and it was cut in the afternoon.
What should I do? The ultimate solution is to take the water.
If you look at the map, you will find that there is a Zhiyin Lake next to the Vulcan Mountain Hospital. The communications engineer erected a fiber optic cable through the water line of the Zhiyin Lake and then received the Vulcan Mountain.
The third, the biggest difficulty is the weather.
Because it was raining in Wuhan at that time, and the temperature was relatively low, it was easy to form freezing. Expansion of the base station must install some equipment on the existing communication tower, at this time the risk is relatively large. So first use the drone to observe first, so as to ensure personnel safety. These are the three biggest difficulties, and some other difficulties were resolved on the spot.
5G wireless base stations are all completed within three days, is the work over? No, the later maintenance is more troublesome. The first problem we faced immediately was indoor distribution.
In the evening of January 31, Vulcan Mountain Hospital was all powered on. After the power was turned on, various indoor constructions can be done, such as indoor units.Room equipment installation, indoor pipeline laying, and room sub-system.
What is the room separation system?
Maybe everyone has this kind of experience. We call in the office building, the signal of turning is gone, or the signal is very weak, and sometimes the signal in the underground garage is also very weak. Why is this happening? Because wireless mobile signals are generally above 2G Hz, the ability to penetrate walls is not very strong, and after multiple refraction, there may be blind spots after reflection.
How to solve it? Add “room points”. The full name is called indoor distribution system, which can increase the strength of received and transmitted signals without increasing capacity. This is actually the kind of “little mushroom head” you usually see in the corridor, which will amplify the wireless signal.
Indoor Distribution System
The large base stations outside are called macro base stations. The indoor distribution system, indoor pipelines, and computer rooms have all been built. Is it over? Not yet, there is an information management system.
We need to build various information systems in Vulcan Mountain Hospital, including patients, doctors, drugs, security, etc. These must be managed in a unified way. Friends who have done related industries may know that this is called a health management system. If you do not have an in-depth understanding of the industry itself, it will be a one-time job.This kind of torture.
The engineers are also desperately trying to debug all kinds of software and hardware before powering on, so they will enter the field to debug as soon as they are powered on. When it was delivered for use on February 2 and patients were admitted on February 3, most of them were ready for use.
3. What role did 5G play in the epidemic?
What role did 5G play in the epidemic? For which industries will there be disruptive changes?
On February 9, Vulcan Mountain Hospital and the PLA General Hospital completed the first remote consultation on 5G network. On February 14th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a media briefing in Beijing to introduce the overall situation of 5G and telecommunications big data analysis for the prevention and control of outbreaks of supporting services. The evaluation of 5G is: Facing the test of the sudden epidemic, 5G, which has just been commercialized recently, played an important role in this epidemic struggle.
The most prominent is 5G live video, 5G remote consultation system.
Remote consultation
In addition to Vulcan Mountain Hospital, such as Lei Shenshan, Wuhan Union Medical College Hospital, Sichuan University West China Hospital, and Sichuan Health Construction Commission have completed remote consultation of 5G network, so that expert resources can be fully utilized, and patients can also be contactless. Enjoy expert consultation services. Vulcan Mountain Hospital also uses a 5G telemedicine cart, where local medical data, including CT image detection indicators, can be shared with remote experts for remote diagnosis.
In addition, there are 5G robots. Because the epidemic should avoid contact, the use of robots is a very good scenario. 5G epidemic prevention robots provide patients with simple medical care such as water delivery, medicine delivery, temperature measurement, disinfection and cleaning, which can not only reduce the work intensity of medical staff, but also reduce the probability of infection.
Furthermore, 5G-based thermal imaging technology can be used for fast and non-contact temperature measurement and temperature monitoring in places where a large number of people gather in railway stations, airports, subways, etc. Many places have already begun to use it. In addition, remote collaborative office, remote education, etc. in the rear are also important scenarios for 5G applications.
5G Thermal Imaging Temperature Measurement System
5G reduces population pooling and blocks epidemicsCommunication plays an important role.
From base station construction, indoor construction, to information system construction, Vulcan Mountain Hospital has witnessed the 5G speed of China Communications . This reflects our firm determination to overcome the epidemic. We also wish our Vulcan Mountain Hospital and all the patients of the epidemic an early recovery, and our medical staff will be well protected and triumphant.
This article is from the WeChat public account: made (ID: xingshu100) < span class = "text-remarks">, author: Sunsong Lin