PRESS RELEASE: China Mobile Shandong and Huawei successfully deployed a new 5G experience improvement solution tailored for high-speed trains, based on dynamic radio power allocation. Field trials in Shandong, along the railway tracks in the city of Yantai, showed significant improvements in both network coverage and user experience.
The high-speed railway in Shandong Province runs over 2300 km, ranking top three in China. With such an extensive railway network in place, it has been very challenging for the railway infrastructure managers and mobile network operators to maintain coverage, capacity as well as user experience. That evokes an innovative railway communication network solution.
Traditional mobile networks for high-speed railways employ a two-sector configuration using two antennas, which may result in issues like inaccurate power projection, blind spots under base station towers, poor cell edge performance, interference between public and dedicated networks etc. Moreover, the special materials of the high-speed railway carriages bring in larger 5G signal penetration losses, which can easily lead to poor user experience. Different from general public mobile networks, high-speed railway networks are characterized by high-speed mobility and high user density hotspots. This demands an innovative radio and antenna solution to make optimized use of the available power.
To solve the challenges, China Mobile Shandong introduced Huawei’s innovative power allocation solution specifically adapted for high-speed trains. The solution uses a unique radio power allocation scheme and an antenna roll technology to improve network coverage along railway tracks. With the power allocation technology, the radio power in both the left and right sectors are dynamically allocated to the antenna array that is projecting the signal in the same direction as the trains are running. This greatly improves network coverage, making more efficient user of the available power. With the industry’s first antenna having a roll positioning feature, using beam deflection and multi-dimensional tilt adjustment technologies, coverage performance is maximized and meanwhile interference is reduced.
This innovative power adaption solution uses the unique Huawei Integrated Pisa Antenna, with a folded array design, enabling efficient integration of two multi-array antenna panels and a roll adjustment feature, into a single antenna. In this way, only one antenna is required for providing bi-directional coverage. This simplifies antenna deployment and improves deployment efficiency, with only a single installation needed.
Real network field tests in Yantai show that the 5G high-speed innovative power solution improves the downlink coverage by an average of 3.9 dB, downlink rate by 27%, and uplink rate by 26%, compared to traditional 2.6 GHz 8T solutions. This significantly improves the network performance and user experience.
This successful solution, piloted in Yantai, provides valuable experience for 5G high-speed railway network construction. China Mobile Shandong will continue to explore innovative ways to build a digital and intelligent transportation system in Shandong. As a leading infrastructure vendor, Huawei is committed to provide innovative radio solutions and antenna technologies to support construction of high-speed railway networks.