China Unicom developing 5G VR streaming tech

The China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute is working on a new use case for advanced technologies including 5G and VR – panoramic VR streaming of live video using drone technology.

China Unicom and wireless broadband technology provider Baicells are developing a prototype mobile edge computing VR live video technology using Artesyn Embedded Technologies’ MaxCore mobile edge computing acceleration platform.

The technology uses the emerging panoramic video collage algorithm and transmission protocol to provide VR video streaming from drones equiped with 360-degree high-definition cameras.

Users can manipulate their perspective in real-time, providing a more immersive live VR experience.

“This end-to-end solution can be applied not only to concerts, sporting events, films and other entertainment industries, such as the Mid-Autumn festival, live CCTV broadcasts using VR panoramic technology, but it can also be applied to public safety, emergency communication, UAV inspection, and much more,” Baicells research director Mingyu Zhou said.

“We believe China Unicom and Baicells’ joint research and development can help users experience live HD VR video transmissions more quickly and smoothly.”

“MEC provides a distributed computing environment for application and service hosting, bringing cloud technologies closer to the RAN and ultimately, closer to consumers,” Artesyn marketing VP Linsey Miller added.

“Carriers are telling us that for these applications they need telco-grade features, which is Artesyn’s expertise.”