ZTE along with China Telecom and West China Hospital, a use case on 5G and the Pandemic.

Information technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, edge computing, network slicing, VR/AR, AI and robotics can greatly improve the treatment of patients in hospitals during the Covide-19 pandemic. ZTE has introduced a new approach to patient treatment that use VR and 5G technology with 8K panoramic cameras. West China Hospital of Sichuan University is one of the advanced medical facilities for diagnosing and treating complex and critical illnesses in China. According to China Telecom, this solution covers 208 healthcare units. ZTE with China Telecom completed the rapid construction, optimization, speed test, and commissioning of the 5G indoor distribution system at another core point of the remote diagnosis and treatment system.

The main function of the project was focused on deploying and implementing the four 5G services based on the advanced 5G network architecture. Firstly, the VR remote ward monitoring solution provided the combination of 5G connectivity, 8K panoramic cameras and VR technology for remote immersive monitoring of hospital wards through a 5G high bandwidth, low latency connection.

Secondly, VR remote visits facilitated by the combination of 5G and VR, enabled two-way immersive visits between family members and patients during the Covid-19 restrictions, which increased both family member and patient’s mental health and wellbeing. Sixty year-old Kang Jian, whose son Kang Jianjiao’s legs were seriously injured in a car accident, was able to visit his son in the ICU of West China Hospital virtually, through the 5G+VR system. Kang Jian, said "I can just turn my head to wherever I want to look. If I turn around this way, I get to see his leg. It’s as if I was there."

Third function was telemedicine which uses data screens + remote control and other technologies, to enable collaboration at anytime and anywhere, establishing new remote diagnosis and treatment capabilities to achieve "face-to-face" treatment. Hu Chenggong, Associate Professor, Critical Care Dept., West China Hospital said that "VR technology is now very mature. And 5G technology is very fast, there is no delay. So I thought we could use these technologies for ICU visits and remote diagnosis." Hu Chenggong now wants to expand the use of this technology. As the best hospital in Southwest China, West China Hospital works with many small medical facilities in the region. Hu Chenggong further said that "Some patients might be very remote, and lack good medical resources and experienced doctors. But we can realize tele-medicine through this kind of technology. It’s as though I was standing right there." Through telemedicine many more lives will have another chance.

Lastly ICU Central Monitoring with the help of technologies such as remote simulation control of intelligent terminals, central access and monitoring of ICU bed unit equipment through the 5G network, allows medical staff to provide real-time patient monitoring. The videos captured by each of these cameras offer an immersive experience." Unlike traditional video chatting, the VR technology provides a 360-degree panoramic view.

ZTE is committed to expanding the use of wireless technologies to support telemedicine across the world through trials and commercial deployments in many countries, including a remote consultation service in Colombia and remote ambulance connectivity in Hong Kong, in collaboration with mobile operators and healthcare institutions.

Virtualized telemedicine applications for remote consultations and other healthcare services will improve the availability and outcome of medical care across all markets, as well as peoples’ quality of life and standard of living in the future.

In June 2021, Hutchison Drei Austria launched the 1st Pilot 5G SA network with ZTE as one of the first 5G standalone in Europe, enabling a new and open telco ecosystem to improve flexibility, efficiency, openness and customer experience, supporting the full 5G-SA capabilities including eMBB, mMTC, uRLLC, Edge computing, slicing, third party integration, orchestration and automation, layer 2/3 decoupling.

Speaking with ZTE Technologies Magazine, earlier this year Drei CEO Rudolf Schrefl said “With ZTE as a partner on the 5G journey of Drei, we were able to perform the first public 5G NSA call just two weeks after we acquired the frequency. In June 2019 have have launched the first continuously covered 5G region in Austria in and three months later, in September 2019, we have offered the first commercial 5G tariffs in Austria. From March to November 2020, we have completed core network commissioning and debugging, acceptance test and access network cutover successfully one and half months earlier than planned, by applying the ZTE pandemic-driven Digital Remote Delivery & Deployment Process.”

Drei Austria is the pioneer of the digital transformation and is leading the 5G development in Austria providing top quality services benefiting end users as well as enterprise customers. The deployment of a full 5G SA network with ZTE enables the use of network slicing including 5G quality of services. It ensures enhanced network security, high flexibility, low time to market and higher levels of radio resource management. This is one of the first telco ecosystems supporting end to end Stand Alone solutions utilizing an open platform enabling successful use cases with 2C and 2B customers, for example the Bee-o-meter, which is a remote monitoring solution for assessing the health and operating environment of commercial bee hives and enhancing user experience.

Some of the key innovations incorporated into ZTE’s solution include our micro-service based, orchestrated core network, which is able to support 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G SA and NSA, and Fixed networks enhancing efficiency, quality and end customer perception with reduced time to market for new service deployment which has been further stressed by ?Mario Paier, Head of Strategy and Technology at Drei Austria.

ZTE’s Network Slicing Store provides enterprises with a platform through which they can directly buy specific network slices tailored to the needs of the service they are providing to their end customers, enables B2B2C applications which can be translated to any market globally for any operator ready for the investment and spectrum.

The technical benefits of 5G are now clear and the standards mature, with the conversation shifting to how the next-generation technology can be used to create value across all sectors of society and be the foundation of growth.

ZTE along with the University of L’Aquila in collaboration with the Municapality, a use case on the earthquake.

Structural Health Monitoring- Health Earth is a solution that allows to report the arrival of the shock wave of an earthquake 10 second in advance. The usecase is due to the studies of the Faculty of Telecommunications Engineering of the Abruzzo Capital, L’Aquila, and to the 5G signal made by the Chinese multinational that made Italy one of its most important country in Europe.

The solution uses mathematical modelling to determine the installation sites for a large number of sensors at the most suitable locations in the buildings and analyses the condition of the buildings through monitoring data returned by the sensors. The automated generated reports show accurate information and can be shared on real time. As depicted by the graph 14:47 on 27th March 2021, several seismic events occurred in the area of the South Adriatic Sea. The strongest earthquake recorded a magnitude of Mw 5.2 at 11 km depth. Although this event was more than 240 km away from the sensors deployed, Figure 1 Automated Data clearly shows the recording of this event in the automatically generated report, which includes the traces of the accelerometers’axes (with the detection times and the indicated peaks of accelerometers’values).

The technicians have reproduced a scale model of a building demonstrating, in real time, how much the alert can anticipate the actual impact of the shock wave in residential areas.Therefore, the usecase was developed by simulating the terrible earthquakes of L’Aquila and Amatrice, in which more than 500 people died.

The accomplishments of this innovation have been so important that the Municipal Administration of Rome, chaired by Virginia Raggi, asked to replicate it by monitoring, for a 6 month period, the structures of the ancient Palazzo Senatorio, located in Piazza del Campidoglio, in the heart of the Capital.Since the earthquake in 2009, the Municipality of L’Aquila is sensitive to the safety of their people, hence ZTE had the opportunity to help provide solution that will ease the pressure on them whilst monitoring the structures. This ensure that emergency services can be provided and when needed without any delay.

With the success of monitoring and surveillance in Italy, the solution can be translated to other countries, such as Nepal, which has active volcanoes or is prone to natural disasters. ZTE will continue to provide these social benefits so that we can add value to businesses and enhance peoples quality and standard of living.