The concept of Aerial base station (ABS) or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-Mounted Base Station (BS) has long been developed in developed countries.
Relying on unmanned vehicles, both in the form of drones and hot air balloons, ABS is expected to be a bridge for communication access in rural areas and a solution for responding to emergency communications when natural disasters occur. However, the ABS concept that has been developed so far is still limited.
It is called limited, because it is still dominated by the scope of the trial which does not yet involve the full role of cellular operators. Not to mention, ABS access restrictions are still stuck in the scope of 2G and 3G technology.
Well, recently there was news from the Bamboo Curtain Country, precisely on June 20, 2022, the Sichuan Xichuan Shield Department, announced that it had succeeded in flying the MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) drone of the Shuangxiao UAV on a mission that was claimed to be the first time in the world.
The Shuangxiao drone, which is equipped with two turboprop engines, carries the Jiuquan Fan Piercing Terminal, a high altitude base station device, which will be verified through trials. The Sichuan Xichuan Shield Department said this is the world's first pilot test of an aerial base station capable of handling transmissions from several cellular operators.
Not only that, this is also the first air base station capable of handling several cellular services based on 2G, 3G and 4G. Cellular services include voice, SMS and mobile data.
The Chinese operators participating in the aerial base station trial are China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom.
“Notice from Sichuan Province Communication Administration Bureau – User, your mobile phone is connected to the communication network via the UAV air base station and you can receive voice calls, SMS and other services. Congratulations!” reads a message received by a mobile user in the test area.
After flying for an hour, at 10:31 am local time, the drone, dubbed “Futao Li”, made a perfect landing. This MALE drone has a total length of 10 meters, a wingspan of 20 meters and a height of 3.1 meters.
This drone can fly continuously for 35 hours and fly up to an altitude limit of 10,000 meters. In civil service, ABS drones are useful for rapid recovery of public communication networks after major periodic disasters. As for military duties, of course, there are many things that this aerial base station can do.
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