IMDA 5G Use-Case Findings
Singapore’s airport is one of the world’s busiest airports by international passenger and cargo traffic. Recently it was voted the top 3 ‘World’s Best Airports’ of 2022 by Skytrax1. To ensure Changi Airport Group (CAG)2 continues to provide top quality service and operate safely, a world-class aviation rescue and fire-fighting unit is essential. The Airport Emergency Service (AES)3 at CAG is responsible for ensuring the safety of every aircraft and passenger going in and out of the airport.
As part of ongoing efforts to study the potential of 5G to enhance AES’ sea rescue operations and incident management capabilities, CAG partnered with StarHub4 in 2020 to equip AES with 5G enabled data connectivity. As 5G was still nascent in 2020, ensuring adequate network coverage with Cellular-On-Wheels (CoW)5, testing network slicing6 and understanding the various frequency bands (i.e. 700MHz and 3.5GHz), were critical. The intent was for StarHub’s 5G networks to provide CAG’s crisis command centers with greater situational awareness of events on the ground and control of assets deployed during a sea turnout.
As the success of every sea rescue operation, being time-sensitive in nature, hinges on Ground Commanders making the correct decisions by having access to critical information in real time, AES will be able to enhance its current live video feed system with sharper and clearer video quality, with low latency, when streaming images from seaward vessels to the land-based command centre with 5G standalone networks, thus resulting in much improved situational awareness. The first use case was to test 5G standalone (SA) network using the 3.5GHz frequency band with network slicing, for assured Quality of Service (QoS). Through this, CAG aims to establish a more reliable and resilient communication channel over a wider coverage area. It is known that by reducing turnaround time for every activity, this has co-interdependency in saving lives.
Exploring network slicing for better quality video streaming
With the AES team being out at sea, uninterrupted critical communication is of upmost importance to ensure that instructions are passed down to personnel and assets in a timely manner. 5G allows for higher quality video streaming, which helps the onsite commanders get a clearer visual of incidents happening out at sea. Tests across various video resolutions (i.e. 4K, 2K and 1K video streams7), to determine the maximum distance possible with no jitter or frame lost in video transmissions, were identified. With the 3.5GHz frequency band, this provided 4K video streaming with no noticeable pixilation up to 500m (from shoreline), 2K video streaming up to 3Km and 1K video streaming up to 4.5Km. To ensure uninterrupted high quality video streaming, Starhub implemented network slicing for the provisioning of dedicated bandwidth, required by AES mission critical devices.
“We are able to tag the device to a particular network slice, allowing base stations to identify devices through their unique network slice. This allows for prioritisation of important devices in times of emergency, to ensure that the network is open and readily available during a crisis” says Mr Ng Chak Hwee, Head Planning of Changi Airport Group, explaining how 5G can provide for guaranteed quality of service. Through the implementation of network slicing, the on-site commander will be able to obtain a consistent “live” video feed even when the network is flooded with traffic from the public.
Ayush Sharma, Chief Technology Officer of StarHub adds, “StarHub is excited to partner CAG to demonstrate network slicing capabilities on our fully agile, intelligent, and scalable 5G network. The network can intelligently allocate network slices according to various connectivity needs, i.e: low latency, high throughput, and massive connectivity for emergency operations, human communications or machine to machine connectivity. With the combination of low band and mid band spectrum, critical crisis communication devices can intelligently switch between the network layer to achieve a bespoke, end-to-end network to give optimal communication needs. Besides, the 5G connectivity is fully secure and encrypted to provide a high-quality enterprise communication need.”
Exploring different 5G frequency bands for improved performance and consistency
With the 700MHz frequency band (not yet commercially available for 5G in Singapore), measurements without CoW, provided an average downlink8 (DL) of 114.95Mbps, uplink9 (UL) of 33.09Mbps and latency10 of 17ms. With CoW at 1Km, an average DL of 120.22Mbps, UL of 43.50Mbps and latency of 15ms was observed.
With the 3.5GHz frequency band, measurements without CoW, provided an average DL of 248.81Mbps, UL of 7.38Mbps and latency of 10ms. With CoW at 1Km, an average DL of 281.67Mbps, UL of 33.79Mbps and latency of 10ms was observed.
In summary, the 700 MHz frequency band had better video UL performance when compared to 3.5 GHz, for ranges up to 4Km. This improved video uplink capability was essential for AES vessels relaying situational information out at sea. Furthermore, having CoW significantly improved network redundancy, coverage and data throughput readings, especially for routes with heavy shipping traffic.
As StarHub and CAG were one of the first few to embark on 5G Standalone (SA) trials out at sea, there were several lessons to be learnt. “We found that the movement of ships or obstruction from other moving vessels, affected the quality of 5G signals. As a result, StarHub and CAG had to come up with solutions to maintain the 5G cellular link quality onboard our vessels.” Ng explains. Through the trials, the team managed to learn more about coverage weak spots and provided learnings on how to reroute traffic to alternate base stations for better performance. These valuable insights can be used in future planning of fixed or mobile base stations, to ensure optimum coverage.
Uncovering potential use cases and building the future 5G ecosystem
Another feature that came to light during the trials was the ability to accurately track the whereabouts and movements of firefighting resources in real time. “By incorporating 5G in our Incident Command and Control setup and deployment of a mobile application (Life360), we had enhanced visibility on the quantity, location, and type of resources available within the vicinity. This will allow the Ground Commander to effectively prioritise and allocate resources during search and rescue operations.” says Ng.
The trials concluded with key insights into the use of 5G to improve and complement the way AES officers work whether in peacetime or during an emergency. “The results are promising, and we believe that 5G has the potential to benefit our operations in the future.” says Ng. However, going beyond the trials, Ng also emphasised the need to build the 5G ecosystem further and testbed more products, devices and offerings as soon as they become readily available. As an example, there is momentum being drummed up globally to push emergency services to look towards 5G for mission critical communications11, an area that 4G has perhaps already plateaued in terms of solutions.
Beyond the use of 5G during emergencies, CAG is also looking at using 5G networks slicing to enhance and drive a secure and efficient airport terminal operation. For example, autonomous baggage handling vehicles, firefighting robots that work hand in hand with human firefighters12 as well as video analytics for advanced detection of fires and human lives, are some examples of other 5G use cases that could potentially mitigate human-error prone activities, thus making them safer and more manpower productive. These use cases, when plugged into the 5G ecosystem in the airport, would also allow various 5G enabled solutions and moving parts to operate, coordinate and communicate seamlessly with each other under one roof. In that regard, CAG will continue to study the operational and commercial viability of 5G to expand on these use cases, to improve overall efficiency and user experience. Similarly, StarHub will continue to introduce new 5G products and services, in line with StarHub’s DARE+13 strategy in becoming a full-on digital life and services provider.
Footnotes
1 Skytrax World Airport Awards is a prestigious accolade for the airport industry, as voted by customers in one of the largest, annual global airport customer satisfaction surveys. It ranks Singapore’s Changi Airport as one of the top 3 World’s Best Airports of 2022.
2 CAG: undertakes key functions focusing on Singapore airport operations and management, air hub development, commercial activities and airport emergency services.
3 AES: provides rescue and fire protection at Singapore’s Changi and Seletar airports, including RSAF airbases. . It operates highly specialized emergency vessels and equipment in the event of aircraft incidents out at sea, the Sea Rescue Base is also the only hovercraft operator in Singapore.
4 Starhub: is a Singaporean multinational telecommunications conglomerate and one of the major telcos operating in the country.
5 Cellular-On-Wheels CoW: is a portable base station used to provide temporary cellular network coverage for high-profile events and emergency situations where existing base stations become damaged, or during natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.
6 Network slicing: is a network architecture that enables the multiplexing of virtualized and independent logical networks on the same physical network infrastructure. Each network slice is an isolated end-to-end network tailored to fulfil diverse requirements requested by a particular application.
7 4K, 2K and 1K video resolutions: 4K resolution refers to a horizontal display of approximately 4,000 pixels. Consumer media reference 4K resolution as 3840 × 2160 (4K UHD) and Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) defining 4K resolution as 4096 × 2160. 2K resolution refers to content having horizontal display of approximately 2,000 pixels. Consumer media reference 2K resolution as 1920 × 1080 (FullHD or 1080p) and DCI defining 2K resolution as 2048 × 1080 and 1K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 1,000 pixels
8 Downlink (DL): A data connection for the download of information from network core to end user equipment.
9 Uplink (UL): A data connection for the upload of information from end user equipment toward the network core.
10 Latency: Used to indicate delay in data communication over the network.
11 Mission-critical communications can be defined as the ability to deliver a fast, secure, uninterrupted and reliable communications network for emergency response during a disaster.
12 An autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is a type of robot that can understand and move through its environment without being overseen directly by an operator or limited to a fixed, predetermined path.
13 DARE+ is the next step in StarHub’s transformation journey for greater customer experience, efficiencies, competitiveness and agility. It is part of StarHub’s change to go beyond telco and becoming a full-on digital life and services provider, whilst embracing innovative solutions.
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