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Two vendors team with mobile operators to test the ability of drones to provide network coverage and support 5G developments.
The ability of drones to provide rapid network coverage in remote areas was put to the test by Nokia and Ericsson, which separately announced tests of the unmanned aerial vehicles with leading mobile operators.
Nokia got the ball rolling with the announcement of a drone trial conducted in the UK in conjunction with EE.
The trial saw a drone used to carry a miniaturised Nokia base station around rural areas surrounding the city of Inverness in the north of the UK, and was designed to prove the ability of drones to enable operators to quickly set up mobile network access.
An LTE-capable Nokia Flexi Zone Pico cell base station was used to provide voice calls, video streaming services, and mobile data access at rates of up to 150 Mbps. While none of the services required a connection to an external core, Nokia said it tested the backhaul of a standard small cell with EE’s core network using a satellite connection.
Mansoor Hanif, director of radio access network at EE, said the trial demonstrated that the combination of drones and innovative base station technologies was an effective means of deploying 4G services in remote areas.
Ericsson, meanwhile, teamed up with China Mobile to test the role that drones could play in 5G developments.
During the trial, a drone was flown using China Mobile’s cellular network, which Ericsson explained was equipped with “5G-enabled technologies”. The partners successfully completed handover between multiple sites during the drone’s flight, on a network that was still being used by China Mobile subscribers.
Ericsson said the trial formed part of a broader 5G technology development partnership with China Mobile, and proved that drones could be used to provide “mission-critical applications such as support for emergency services.”
However, the infrastructure vendor sounded a note of caution on the future use of drones, explaining that mobile operators must be able to guarantee low end-to-end network latency to “ensure the safety and reliability of such services.”
