At the Digital China Construction Summit (also known as the Digital Summit), Vice President of China Mobile Research Institute Mr. Ding Haiyu delivered a keynote speech on “5G+ Smart Ocean – Creating A New Era of Ocean Digital Economy” at the Digital Fujian Sub-Forum. Mr. Ding also released a jointly with China Mobile Fujian, 5G Smart Ocean Whitepaper, which systematically proposes the network structures and key technologies required for 5G Smart Ocean.
Mr. Ding explained that the Intelligent Ocean Network (ION) aims to optimize the spatial layout of the marine economy, accelerate the modernization of the maritime industry, enhance the independent innovation of marine technology and promote protection of marine resources. By focusing on the three prominent goals of good governance, business prosperity and being people-oriented, China Mobile is dedicated to helping the robust development of blue digital economy with the use of smart technologies to create digital and intelligent value for customers.
Mr. Ding then outlined the idea for 5G+ smart ocean that could create a new era of ocean digital economy. It primarily serves to guide the construction of 5G ION and the expansion of applications. The first step is to build a smart ocean data structure to ensure seamless connection among various marine application demands, often by deploying new offshore infrastructure and core technologies including 5G, AI, IoT, cloud computing, big data and edge computing. With these in place, 5G+ smart ocean can effectively support the integration and centralized management of ocean and land with the same frequency, which ultimately provides comprehensive services for digital marine constructions and promotes more practical use of 5G for maritime purposes.
Furthermore, he also introduced the 5G smart ocean network structure and networking solution, with a focus on full-service scenario. The 5G space-air-land, multi-frequency network can satisfy the application demands for information in coastal, offshore and distant waters, as well as the satellite communications in deeper and remote ocean areas. Mr. Ding shared how 5G smart ocean network construction solutions could overcome the challenges in marine network construction, for example ultra-long-distance coverage, increase in uplink coverage, multi-dimensional interference response and ship-borne coverage.
Mr. Ding expressed his visions for the future of 5G smart ocean towards the end of his speech. Since the current 5G network can already cover up to 50km offshore, he is confident that the network can be extended to 100km or more with 5G+ satellite integrated technology, which can better serve different demands of the marine industry. Moving forward, Mr. Ding hopes to achieve a seamless and interactive “land-sea-space-air” connection for proactively promoting China’s key strategy of becoming a maritime superpower.
