Until June 18, the Rouen Armada is held, the largest gathering of tall ships in the world. This extraordinary event takes place every four to six years on the quays of the Seine, within the Normandy metropolis itself. For ten days, nearly 6 million visitors will come to admire the most famous three-masters on the planet and chat with their crews.
For this 2023 edition, France 3 has decided to innovate to broadcast unpublished images on its regional antenna, France 3 Normandie, but also in live streaming on its site. The TV channel has installed cameras on the main pillars of the Gustave Flaubert bridge in Rouen, more than 50 meters high, providing impressive panoramic images of the arrival and departure of boats.
10 km of optical fiber
These so-called PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) cameras have the particularity of being remotely controlled by the France 3 management. To guarantee the quality of transmission, it uses a private 5G network. Airmob, part of the telecom infrastructure operator Altitude, deployed 10 km of optical fiber to cover an area of 2 km². The “5G bubble” itself includes six outdoor radio antennas spread over the banks of the Seine and a 5G network core.
The antennas use the 2.6 GHz frequency band and that between 3.8 and 4 GHz. This latter spectrum is used on an experimental basis and has been authorized by Arcep. Airmob has also set up a specific antenna to feed data from temperature, sound level or humidity sensors. ” Upstream, a study made it possible to identify the best location of the antennas to obtain optimal coverage »explains Jean-Baptiste Lacourte, 5G project director at Airmob
The schedule was tight. The deployment took place over 15 days in order to take into account the concession granted to the organizer of the event limited to two months but also the constraints of France 3 which had to carry out its own tests. “In all, about ten people were mobilized to ensure the deployment of underground fiber, radio equipment and the core network. “, continues Jean-Baptiste Lacourte. Airmob provides 24/7 supervision of the network.
Slicing and beamforming
To guarantee a high level of service and very low latency, this private network relies on the specific advantages of 5G standalone. Starting with the slicing, evening the cutting of the network them “slices”. A “slice” with optimal performance carries critical uses. The other slice, more restricted, has a limited bandwidth. A partitioning of the flows ensures the tightness between these two sections.
Another feature of the new 5G antennas: beamforming or “spatial filtering”. This technique concentrates the signal on the user instead of transmitting in all directions as is the case with the antennas of previous generations. The connection is, in fact, more direct, faster and more reliable. “Beyond performance gains, this focus reduces power consumption », adds Jean-Baptiste Lacourte.
Events and industrial sites
Beyond France 3, Airmob has made the private 5G network available to the organizers of the Armada so that they can connect the CCTV cameras and transmit the video stream to the security PC. Private 5G lends itself ideally to event professions where it is a question of covering a limited space but with high requirements.
Other use cases are emerging. In the context of regional planning, private 5G makes it possible to cover an area of activity that is not eligible or poorly served by optical fiber and public 5G. The metropolis of Toulouse will be the first local authority to operate the first private 5G network.
Manufacturers want to ensure indoor and outdoor coverage of their sites and offer innovative industry 4.0-type uses. In France, Alcatel Submarine Networks and ArcelorMittal recently communicated on their first use cases in terms of process digitization and predictive maintenance.
Photo credits: The Armada of Freedom, Airmob