Full 5G coverage at SZ airport

Writer: Han Ximin  |  Editor: Stephanie Yang  |  From: Shenzhen Daily  |  Updated: 2020-05-26

Shenzhen International Airport is now fully 5G covered, as the last outdoor base station was installed Saturday — a full three months ahead of schedule, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

An important step in becoming a smart airport, the Shenzhen airport planned 41 outdoor 5G base stations with signals that can fully cover Terminal 3, the flight area, the cargo area and the ground public transportation area.

In partnership with three major telecom operators, the Shenzhen airport pushed forward 5G construction by adopting the latest Huawei LampSite technologies and equipment.

Initial tests show the speed of the 5G network at the airport had increased to 15 times the speed of 4G. The single user download speed could reach up to 1.9Gbps, meaning it would take 10 seconds to download a 1GB high-definition movie.

The Shenzhen airport has been chosen by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), China’s aviation authority, to be a prime example in smart airport construction.

In the guidelines released in December last year, CAAC said the Shenzhen airport will be a benchmark for smart airports and a beacon for applying new technology.

By 2030, digitalization will be fully integrated with airport businesses and the facility will be a demonstration airport for smart construction and enhanced capabilities will have reached a world-class distinction.

The administration will provide support through industrial regulations, research, data sharing, intelligent support and information safety.

As a part of the Future Airport program, Shenzhen has already initiated intelligent security checks, which are helpful in identifying fake identification documents. Additionally, four passages have been equipped with an automatic ID verification system, facial recognition systems, a luggage conveyor system, X-ray scanning systems, body check systems, a luggage re-examination work station and passenger-luggage matching systems.

Around 4 million passengers a year do not need to take shuttle buses from their boarding gates to the planes at the Shenzhen airport, thanks to the application of an intelligent stand allocation system in cooperation with Huawei.

Based on big data and AI, Huawei helped optimize the utilization of contact stands and has increased the direct boarding rate by 7 percent each year, which has saved 4 million passengers from using shuttle buses each year.

The Shenzhen airport handles about 50 million passengers a year.

Between January and April this year, the airport completed 119,000 tons of international cargo throughput, an increase of 2 percent year on year, ranking No. 1 in growth rate among major Chinese cities.