Underground 5G Base Stations will Break Through the 6W Transmission Power Limit

Approved by the State Council, the 2023 World 5G Conference, co hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Henan Provincial Government, with the theme of "5G Transformation and Co drawing the Future", was held from December 6th to 8th at the Zhengzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. 12 parallel forums have been set up at the 2023 World 5G Conference, focusing on "strengthening the foundation and resilient chain, leading and driving", and "empowering high-quality development of industries.".

At the "5G and Smart Mining Forum", Dr. Fan Ji'an, Chief Scientist of China Unicom's Big Data, discussed the value of 5G to mining from the perspective of operators. He pointed out that there are still certain limitations to the scale application of 5G in underground mines, including underground equipment, wireless transmission power, etc., which affect the performance of 5G technology characteristics.

Fan Ji'an introduced that so far, underground wireless equipment, including 5G base stations, have set a safety threshold of no more than 6W transmission power based on traditional experience. But to this day, this setting has seriously affected the performance of 5G's three major capabilities of high bandwidth, low latency, and wide connectivity in underground mines. Due to this limitation, in order to meet the requirements of intrinsically safe base stations, some base stations that were supposed to be built on the ground for blind spots have also been deployed underground, resulting in a significant increase in network equipment beyond the original scope and thus increasing construction and maintenance costs.

Fan Ji'an revealed that China Unicom and the National Center for Safety Standards will cooperate and make significant breakthroughs in the near future through theoretical research, digital simulation, and experiments. Both parties will soon establish technical standards for safety standard review of high-power explosion-proof 5G base stations, break through the limit of 6W transmission power, enhance the safe coverage radius of 5G base stations underground, and deepen the 5G mining private network into core application links such as mining production control, safety supervision and monitoring, main and auxiliary operations, and organizational management.