The Bohai Sea communication and sensing network, jointly built by the Beihai Navigation Guarantee Center of China's Ministry of Transport, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and China Mobile, was officially launched and put into operation on the 15th. This marks that the Bohai Sea has fully entered a new stage of high-speed interconnection and all-area sensing, providing high-speed, stable, and reliable broadband communication and real-time sensing services for maritime activities.
The Bohai Sea is an important navigable sea area in northern China, with dense shipping routes and a complex environment. For a long time, there has been a "communication and sensing bottleneck" in the central waters of the Bohai Sea. To solve this problem, the Beihai Navigation Guarantee Center of the Ministry of Transport, together with CNOOC and China Mobile, innovatively established a cross-industry co-construction mechanism. The construction team overcame multiple challenges, including extreme weather, harsh sea conditions, tight schedules, and complex technologies, and successfully carried out the networking construction of offshore ultra-long-distance communication and sensing base stations by relying on the offshore oil platforms and submarine optical cable resources of the Bohai Oilfield.
At present, within the central waters of the Bohai Sea, the communication and sensing network has built 48 offshore 5G base stations, 8 very high frequency (VHF) base stations, 6 automatic identification system (AIS) base stations, and 4 hydrological observation stations, with a comprehensive signal coverage rate of 95% and a 5G network coverage rate exceeding 80%, achieving full signal coverage of major port anchorages, routes, and waterways in the Bohai Sea, and capable of meeting communication and sensing needs in fields such as maritime supervision, emergency search and rescue, public travel, and marine industry development.
It is reported that the Bohai Sea communication and sensing network has formed multiple core technological innovations, featuring independently controllable sensing capabilities, high-speed and stable transmission links, significantly expanded network coverage, and an intelligent integrated digital foundation.
Relying on the above technological innovations, the Bohai Sea communication and sensing network has achieved remarkable practical results. In terms of ensuring travel, an estimated 300,000 vessel trips and 5 million passenger trips per year can directly benefit; in terms of safety supervision, it provides precise support for water traffic supervision and emergency search and rescue; in terms of empowering industrial development, it lays a solid communication and data foundation for oil and gas development, fishery fishing, offshore wind power, and other industries as well as the development of intelligent shipping, promoting industrial synergy and efficiency improvement.