Recently, in order to strengthen air patrol perception capability of the all-factor water traffic control, Nanjing Maritime Safety Administration led to establish the task force of the “Nanjing Maritime 5G + Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Application Fusion Innovation Center”, and completed a 5G-based UAV remote off-site flight test.
Traditional UAV applications are mostly point-to-point control between the remote control and the UAV, which is limited by communication and battery life. Therefore, it is difficult for traditional UAV to meet the long-duration and wide-range air missions, especially for a strip of water, for example, the Yangtze River. The conventional UAV generally only covers up to 10 km, but the 4G base station control is difficult to meet the requirements of data transmission and flight safety, thus limiting the application of UAVs on the Yangtze River.
In order to verify the feasibility and safety of remote control of UAV off-site flight through 5G, the team of Nanjing Maritime 5G+UAV Application Fusion Innovation Center recently successfully completed a flight test of about 50 km from Nanjing Jiangxinzhou to Xinglongzhou. The team developed a detailed flight plan and submitted it to the air traffic control department based on several signal tests and short-distance flight tests in the early stage. The flight distance was long, and the UAV needed to fly over many bridges and cross-river cables with no remote control intervention throughout the flight. It had a good flight control and map data transmission, which verified the feasibility and safety of off-site flight of UAV through 5G low-altitude network.
Subsequently, the team of Nanjing Maritime 5G+UAV Application Fusion Innovation Center will further improve and optimize the system, adapt the vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing UAV with better battery life, and further strengthen the application of UAV video images to realize the normalization of UAV inspection in Nanjing section of Yangtze River.
