天浪和电波：无人机在应急响应中的应用

INSIGHT SPOTLIGHT Unmanned/uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones,continue to be a promising future means of transportinggoods and people, and an enabler of transformational testing takes place. 5G’s role in elevating the performance of This is the first of a two-part Spotlight series on the changingcommercial models for UAVs, underpinned by mobileconnectivity and technologies. While the second Spotlight willfocus on people density data, this research highlights the The mobile industry is increasingly associated with UAVs, asmore operators bring UAV services to market and extensive Analysis •5Galsoenablesadvanced communications and allows fordata storage and edge application hosting for the purposesof training and operational compliance, as well as image andvideo traffic aggregation.Brinc, a US-based UAV Mobile operators can play a key role in UAV applications The use of UAVs is growing for emergency-response andpublic-safety use cases, helping to enhance operationalreadiness and improve the mobilisation and response of rescuegroups. UAVs can help identify hazards, perform quick surfacesearches and mapping, provide lighting, dropmedication, and UAVs to enable ‘cell on wings’ While 4G networks and mesh/Wi-Fi technologies can alreadyenable such use cases, 5G elevates the capabilities of UAVs.This in turn enables operations to scale and attractive businesspropositions to be built: A UAV can also be used as a ‘cell on wings’, with drones turnedinto air base stations to help provide temporary emergencyconnectivity in disaster zones. A programme from AT&T in the US has shown that a drone can fly up to 450 feet and transmitstrong 5G coverage over 10 square miles for days at a time.First responders and search & rescue personnel with a 5Gphone can go from having no service to a fast wireless •Forcommand and controlcommunications (the exchange ofmission data between the UAV and UAV operator), Wi-Fi andother types of range-limited connectivity are not an option forcovering large areas or distances. Moreover, high reliabilityand availability requirements cannot always be met. 5G Meanwhile, in Australia, Telstra has moved early to deploydrones over its 4G network for mapping and area scans inemergency-response situations. It is also implementing ‘cell onwings’ for 4G. The operator is looking to 5G for greaterefficiencies, particularly in the uplink performance. Similar •Live video streaming is key to emergency-response situationsand requires the low-latency support offered by 5G. Moreadvanced applications are moving towards machine vision forimage recognition; these applications will involve data-intensive AI workloads as well as other context-specific data Implications Mobile operators Policymakers •BVLOS needs to be updated and scaled–Enabling dronesto be operated beyond visual line of sight of their controllerplays an important role in extending the range of emergency-response use cases. According to GSMA Intelligence’sassessment of drone readiness in 12 leading markets, 75% ofcountries–including those in the European Union AviationSafety Agency (EASA) framework–now permit BVLOS with •Offer guaranteed availability and service performance– As well as enabling connectivity for drones in emergency-response applications, operators should look to offer solutionsthat guarantee service availability, a certain level of qualityand network performance. The pricing model can be split intoa standard fee for network access and then charges for •Move up the value chain–Beyond pure connectivity, mobileoperators can provide additional network capabilities to •Don’t overlook public opinion–Research conducted by BT support UAV operations, either in general or for specific usecases. For instance, operators can offer cloud services Group indicates thatthe majority ofUK consumers wouldsupport policymakers in allowing a range of use cases forUAVs, especially for public-safety applications such asmissing-person searches and firefighting.2Policymakers encompassing storage, processing and analytics functions tofacilitate payload transmission. In such scenarios, operatorscan charge for network API use as well as data/applicationhosting on a subscription basis. Operators can also position •Facilitate a two-sided market–Mobile operators canorchestrate the various elements that must work cohesively todeliver effective emergency response using drones. They mayneed to facilitate data exchange betweenUTMsystemvendors, regulators and law enforcement authorities, and emergency-response groups. For example, KDDI haspartnered with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on the use of drones for emergency supplies, as well as Japan Airlinesfor emergency-response monitoring and systems for safe UAV Related reading Authors Christina Patsioura,Lead Analyst, IoT & EnterpriseResearch MNO drone services business models UAVs: commercial applications and the opportunity for © 2023 GSM Association www.gsmaintelligence.com