The big "snowflake" light show at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics was foolproof, and it was LoRa that ensured it!

During the just-concluded Spring Festival holiday, the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics left a deep impression on everyone.

People admired the charm of every frame and every second of the opening ceremony, the magnificent and beautiful Chinese painting, the ingenious stage design and the dazzling digital light and shadow, which amazed the Chinese people and the world. These unforgettable scenes are not only due to the ingenious ideas of the director team, but also inseparable from the Internet of Things technology support provided by Chinese technology companies.

For example, the three major operators provided advanced 5G network coverage for the Winter Olympics; Alibaba Cloud provided the "Olympic Broadcast Cloud" to broadcast 4K ultra-high-definition event content to the world; BOE provided unparalleled display technology and IoT-related technology support... This included BOE's use of a low-latency control system based on the low-power wide area network LoRa, which ensured that the giant "snowflake" shaped main torch stand perfectly presented the light show at the opening ceremony.

LoRa ensures perfect stage effects

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics entered its finale. With the lighting of the Olympic flame, the atmosphere of the venue was pushed to a climax, and the giant "snowflake" shaped main torch stand became the focus of everyone's attention.

Although the crystal-clear snowflake looks simple in shape, it hides countless details. In order to design a "work of art" that can "shine like a diamond" to meet the director's requirements, BOE, which is responsible for designing the torch stand, drew more than 500 design drawings and made nearly 10 rounds of samples.

BOE introduced that this creative "snowflake"-shaped torch stand is composed of 96 double-sided small snowflake screens and 6 double-sided olive branch screens, representing the 96 participating countries. The entire main torch stand has a diameter of 14.89 meters, and it is a double-sided hollow LED special-shaped full-color display, consisting of more than 550,000 pixels, and each lamp bead is independently controlled by a single channel of the driver chip. The width of the light-emitting surface of the hollow snowflake is controlled at 4.8mm, which also makes it the single-pixel controllable LED special-shaped display product with the narrowest light-emitting surface in the industry, filling the gap in the industry.

In addition to the unique design and innovation in hardware and appearance, the more important thing is to ensure that the main torch is foolproof in the stage effect presentation. For example, the design team adopted a five-way power supply method, so that even if several of the wires are disconnected, the "snowflakes" can still glow normally. Of course, this is only the easiest solution to implement.

The most tense process is after the torch is lit, when the giant snow screen will quickly radiate from the center to the surroundings, shining with waves of brilliant light. The fast-changing and perfectly synchronized display uses BOE's AIoT technology system and independently developed synchronous/asynchronous compatible signal transmission system. The asynchronous centralized control can quickly send large-scale video content in a very short time, and the synchronous centralized control ensures that the 102 double-sided screens achieve millisecond-level response. In addition, the high-redundancy control system of the "main + loop" backup ensures the ultra-high reliability of the torch stand broadcast control system.

At the same time, the solution also uses a LoRa (long-range radio) low-latency control system combined with synchronous playback time correction technology to further ensure that commands are issued without fail and achieve perfect coordination of video images.

Unveiling the secrets of LoRa powering the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics

As a spread spectrum modulation technology, LoRa technology may not be as familiar to consumers as Wi-Fi short-distance communication, but in the field of Internet of Things, LoRa is well-known. In general, LoRa has the characteristics of long-distance coverage, strong anti-interference ability, low power consumption, large capacity, easy deployment, and low cost, which is why it can become the hero behind the big "snowflake".

First, the coverage is wide. As we all know, the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics was held in the National Stadium (Bird's Nest). As an Olympic heritage and landmark sports building, the Bird's Nest covers an area of ​​204,000 square meters, with a construction area of ​​258,000 square meters and can accommodate 91,000 spectators. If you want to achieve wireless communication control in such a huge space, long-distance coverage is absolutely impossible.

LoRa stands for Long Range, and its name means that it is designed for long distances. So how far can LoRa be transmitted? At the end of January 2019, Thomas Telkamp, ​​CTO of Lacuna Space, demonstrated at the TTN (The Things Network) conference how to use satellite base stations to connect LoRaWAN devices anywhere in the world. This is actually based on the ultra-long working distance of LoRa.

Secondly, it has strong anti-interference ability. In a huge venue, another requirement to ensure the stability of long-distance control is anti-interference. In large spaces or environments with severe 2.4GHz frequency interference, LoRa technology can be used as the core technology for stable communication. It has extreme anti-interference technology that can still communicate at 20dB below noise, which is not available in existing traditional communication technologies, further ensuring that the process of issuing instructions is foolproof.

Of course, the low power consumption, low cost and large capacity of LoRa technology are also the key to supporting the main torch stand of the "Snowflake" event. Each of the more than 550,000 lamp beads is independently controlled by a single channel of the driver chip. If the capacity is small, then it will be impossible to guarantee equipment online and network stability.

In fact, this is not the first time that a similar scene has appeared. In past large-scale events and conferences, it has been common to use LoRa to control lighting. Through LoRa, it can be used to control which lights need to be on and which lights need to be off, thereby presenting a variety of words, images, etc.

LoRa Application in Sports

In addition to being used in similar large-scale evening parties, LoRa technology has actually penetrated into many fields such as smart meters, smart agriculture, industrial control, asset and personnel tracking, smart buildings, smart cities, environmental monitoring, smart homes, etc. According to ABI Research, by 2026, 50% of LPWAN IoT solutions will use LoRa solutions.

Today, taking the opportunity of the Winter Olympics, we might as well take a look at the application of LoRa in sports events. In fact, the personnel positioning and tracking functions based on LoRa technology have long been used in ultra-marathon events.

Compared with ordinary marathons, ultramarathons have longer competition time, longer race mileage and more rigorous competition environment. For example, the event venues are often set in mountainous areas, dense forests, beaches and other places. Therefore, event organizers need to take more active and effective measures to prevent accidents to athletes or help athletes resolve dangers in a timely manner.

The advantages of LoRa long-distance data transmission can easily meet the needs of the organizers. First, with a small number of LoRa gateways deployed, the entire competition area can be covered without blind spots, avoiding signal loss caused by poor cellular network coverage; secondly, LoRa has super anti-interference capabilities, which can fully ensure the stable upload of athlete data; thirdly, LoRa has low power consumption characteristics, which can ensure that athletes' wearable devices, alarms or trackers are always online during long competitions.

Final Thoughts

Whether LoRa technology is used to ensure the stage effects of the main torch of the Winter Olympics or is used in sports events, it is just the tip of the iceberg in the commercialization exploration of LoRa.

Gan Quan, Semtech China's market strategy director, once said in his book, "LoRa is just a low-level modulation technology. How it is used in the specific market depends on whether its characteristics can be discovered by the market and whether it can create value." The opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics is an excellent stage for LoRa applications, but it is foreseeable that many LoRa applications will be explored and discovered in the future.

References: 1. "The first case in China! CASCO's train autonomous operation system based on vehicle-to-vehicle communication completes on-site multi-vehicle unmanned driving test verification!", China Railway Signal & Communication Corporation 2. "Shanghai subway passenger was trapped and died. Is fully automatic driving safe enough?", Electronics Fan Network 3. "The first + highest level + fully automatic driving in China! This rail transit is amazing", China Railway 14th Bureau