Far EasTone Telecom (FET), a communications service provider in Taiwan, has delivered the 5G Smart Patrol Car solution for the police department by leveraging AI and Ericsson’s end-to-end 5G network slicing technology including 5G core and RAN slicing utilising dynamic radio resource partitioning in a live 5G standalone (SA) network.
The pioneering use case demonstrates advanced 5G capability to enable mission-critical applications for the public sector, marking another milestone in the two companies’ 20 years of partnership.
The 5G Smart Patrol Car solution is an application created for the Kaohsiung City police department, in a city located in Southern Taiwan, to support license plate recognition. With the application, patrol cars equipped with high-resolution photography devices use an AI image analysis solution to identify vehicles that have been reported stolen.
With high data throughput and low latency guaranteed by Ericsson’s end-to-end 5G network slicing technology, the data from moving patrol cars can be transmitted in real-time, allowing for the immediate recognition of these license plates being sighted by the device. The police then can take actions based on the information provided. The flexibility and quality assurance gained from customised network service delivered by a dedicated network slice can increase the efficiency and situational awareness of law enforcement.
As police patrol cars will be constantly on the move, Ericsson’s dynamic radio resource partitioning, a feature of 5G RAN slicing, plays an essential role in the solution by optimising radio resources, strengthening end-to-end slicing capabilities for dynamic resource management, and orchestration while securing required performance level for multiple services.
In addition, the 5G Smart Patrol Car solution uses Ericsson local packet gateway, an edge user plane with small footprint, to connect each equipped car to a regional site for each city for data processing without installing a system on every single car. This not only reduces costs, but also allows data to be kept at a city-level (a police department requirement), which enables low latency and improves data security while ensuring the police in the first line and at the command centre can always access the most up-to-date and constantly synchronised data. These features, along with other characteristics, mean the solution as a whole is highly scalable and replicable.
In the end of December 2022, the solution was handed to Kaohsiung City police department as the completion of the first phase. The solution will also be used to detect crimes in crowded public area, such as concerts and football games. In such scenarios, network slicing would allow high-resolution real-time images to be transmitted from police patrol cars to the central command centre to ensure timely situational awareness and emergency response.
Chee Ching, president of Far EasTone Telecommunications, says: “We are thrilled to achieve another 5G milestone with Ericsson by creating the very first network slicing use case in a live 5G standalone network in Taiwan. The 5G Smart Patrol Car is made possible by our continuous investment in big data, AI and IoT, combining with Ericsson top-notch 5G technology and the great support from Kaohsiung City police department. In collaboration with both public and private sectors, we will continuously explore various scenarios with 5G to enhance the efficiency of urban governance, bringing more innovative and reliable services to the society.”
David Chou, president of Ericsson Taiwan, says: “Network slicing enables communications service providers to offer innovative services to enter new markets. By creating and operating end-to-end logical networks on top of a shared infrastructure, network slicing can provide tailored services with different requirements on speed, latency and reliability for various use cases, with its full potential only made possible through 5G Standalone. We expect this collaboration will simplify the 5G Smart Patrol Car setup and provide ease of maintenance and operations. Ericsson’s network slicing technology addresses further 5G business opportunities with full flexibility.”
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