USV trial uses existing 4G infrastructure
An unmanned vessel trial in Spain has operated using the connectivity of the Telefónica commercial 4G network for the first time.
Unmanned Teknologies Applications (UTEK), in cooperation with 5TONIC members Telefónica, Ericsson and IMDEA Networks, carried out the trial which could pave the way towards quicker and cheaper deployment of USVs. The trial was carried out at the Pantano de San Juan in Madrid in early December and, according to UTEK the results have fulfilled all expectations.
Cesar Martínez, UTEK’s CEO, said: “The use of commercial communications infrastructures already in service provides a great impulse for USV operation in coastal and inland waters applications”
UTEK provided a boat that can be remotely controlled using the connectivity supported by a radio frequency system operating in unlicensed spectrum. The controller at the shore uses the real time video signal captured by a camera in the boat to steer it in the right direction. The substitution of the RF system by LTE was initially tested in the 5TONIC lab in Leganés. Both, the onshore controller and the USV were connected to the Telefónica LTE network using off-the-shelf commercial routers. For the support of the trial, Telefónica provided the “VPN only Mobile” service, that implements a tunnel inside the mobile network, without getting out to Internet, and also provides fixed IP addresses to the routers. LTE based performance and reliability were comparable to those provided by the private radio system, with the advantage of greatly simplifying the deployment of the equipment.
During the trial, the USV travelled several kilometres controlled from the shore, reaching speeds in excess of 15 knots. No loss of connectivity was observed, and latency was low enough to have no impact on the accuracy of the USV steering at those speeds. The throughput supported also allowed for the use of high-resolution video.
UTEK and 5TONIC will continue their collaboration in order to implement the same use case fully leveraging 5G connectivity. 5G is expected to provide not only higher capacity, that will allow for the use of higher resolution video and 360º vision, but also higher reliability and greater flexibility for configuring the network in order to support the specific requirements of this use case, thanks to network slicing and more effective quality of service management in 5G.
By Jake Frith
