In 20 days, Huawei delivered a miniature version of a smart city

Every spring, various summits come one after another, and the stereotyped format and experience have made many guests feel bored. How can we let the guests get more information and more technological experience in the "conference"?

Not long ago, Huawei China Ecosystem Partner Conference 2019 came to a close at the Straits International Convention and Exhibition Center in Fuzhou. This conference, attended by more than 26,000 people, presented a unique experience that left a deep impression on the guests.

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From "seamless entry into the park" to "traveling all over the island with one face" to "high-speed WIFI coverage without blind spots", the guests seemed to have entered a world-class immersive smart experience space.

This is thanks to Huawei's bold idea: since most of the technology events are just simulations of real situations, can we bring real business scenarios to the conference site so that all the guests can touch and experience them in person?

After proposing this idea, it is bound to face arduous challenges to implement it from the blueprint to engineering practice, just like the various problems Huawei faces in helping the industry to transform digitally. If conditions are available, we must do it; if conditions are not available, we must create them! The "willful" Huawei worked with more than 20 partners to transform the small island where the Fuzhou Straits International Convention and Exhibition Center is located into a "smart island" in just 20 days.

Based on the spatial layout of the "Smart Island", Huawei has built 20 smart application scenarios including smart street lights, smart water conservancy, contactless entry, smart guidance, smart retail, smart conference rooms, etc. at three levels: island, pavilion, and hall.

This is a story about the delivery of an O-On-line, N-No-boundaries, and E-Experience project. Let us review what has happened on this "smart island".

(1) The deadline is right there. No Excuses!

On March 1, the 25th day of the first lunar month, the New Year atmosphere had not yet dissipated, but members of Huawei's "Smart Island" project team had already started working on the project construction.

This is a special project with a deadline set from the beginning. On March 21, Huawei China Ecosystem Partner Conference 2019 will be held as scheduled. More than 20,000 people will attend this event. The deployment of all intelligent application scenarios must be ready before this time!

This is also the first time Huawei has delivered such a tight timeline and heavy task project in Fuzhou. You know, the "Smart Island" can be regarded as a miniature smart city project, similar to the construction of a smart park, involving transportation, water affairs, security, WLAN coverage and other fields. From planning to construction, many practical difficulties need to be overcome.

Take WLAN coverage as an example. When the conference is held, more than 20,000 people will flock to the island in a short period of time. It is a big challenge to allow so many people to experience high-speed wireless network. In addition, the floor height of the Straits International Convention and Exhibition Center is between 17 and 20 meters, which affects the deployment of APs. It is not easy to achieve high-density WIFI coverage in an area of ​​55,000 square meters.

To ensure the smooth delivery of the project, Huawei's "Smart Island" project team was divided into three parts: the network planning group, the delivery guarantee group, and the on-site construction group.

The fact that Huawei's "Smart Island" project team is ready does not mean that the project delivery can be assured. In the entire "Smart Island" project, Huawei also needs to communicate and coordinate with more than 20 partners to participate in it. Problems in any link may lead to problems in project delivery.

On March 11, the cabinets and multi-mode optical fibers purchased from a third party arrived, but the frame was too small and the multi-mode optical fiber type was the wrong type. Therefore, the project team urgently replenished the stock in Fuzhou that day, and the problem was resolved on March 13.

On March 12, the network requirements of each exhibition point in the exhibition area should have been determined. However, due to changes in the display requirements of many exhibition points, the network requirements also changed at the same time, which directly led to the delay of the WLAN construction period; the project delivery team immediately decided to continue the battle, working until 3 am every day for 1 week to ensure that the network requirements were prepared on time.

On March 20, Smart Island conducted an emergency fault drill. The project team set up a maximum concurrency of 3,000+ in multiple areas and drilled the network health.

Finally, during the two-day conference, all business operations of the entire Smart Island were in good condition, supporting more than 4,200 concurrent users and 5.4G peak traffic. This number of concurrent users is already twice that of the Huawei Qingdao Eco-Partner Conference in 2018.

(2) I will never compromise and let you walk around the island with a face like that

In previous large-scale exhibitions, personnel access solutions generally used traditional methods such as badges, card swiping, fingerprints, etc. to manage personnel entry and exit and identity security verification. At the same time, the venues were usually equipped with a large number of security forces to maintain order.

These traditional methods often have problems on two levels: first, the efficiency of guest entry is low, which can easily cause crowded queues; second, some scalpers or lawless elements can deceive the security system and enter the venue by reselling badges, copying cards or making fingerprints, which poses certain safety risks.

In the construction of the "Smart Island", Huawei has deployed more than 600 cameras, of which more than 200 are used for facial recognition. These cameras, through collaboration with the backend system, truly realize the "one face to travel across the island" and seamless passage.

Among them, in order to solve the admission problem of 20,000 people, Huawei arranged 15 channels of facial gates at the entrance of the venue. It can conduct on-site comparison based on the photos uploaded by guests when registering, and complete the recognition in just 1.5 seconds, allowing guests to experience truly seamless entry without queuing.

Senseless entry is just the first step to walking around the island. When the guests enter the main venue, they will be identified, and the company information of the guests can be obtained through face comparison in the background, and the corresponding company logo will be projected on the ecological wall in real time. Not only that, once suspicious persons are found, the system can also draw their movement tracks.

Behind these cameras, there is a conference management platform deployed on Huawei Cloud, which can be used to manage guest facial information, invited guest information, etc. With the support of the conference management platform, guests can not only register through the WeChat applet at the front desk, the company's official website, etc., and provide facial information to complete the "one face to travel around the island" experience, but also make an appointment for a certain meeting agenda through the WeChat applet. The applet will remind the guests and provide intelligent navigation according to the meeting agenda to help guests arrive at the venue on time.

Behind the seemingly simple "traveling around the island with one face" service, there is not only the support of Huawei Cloud, which adopts a hybrid cloud model, but also multiple supporting systems such as WeChat applet, video cloud, integrated security platform, big data platform, ROMA platform, etc. The comprehensive deployment and mutual coordination of these systems finally realized the guests' seamless passage through the "Smart Island".

(III) Competition for the commanding heights of WLAN high-speed coverage without blind spots

In the past, many guests who attended conferences with tens of thousands of people had this experience: the wireless WIFI in the venue was mostly just for show. Not only was the speed slow, but there was often no signal. Mobile Internet access ultimately had to rely on the operator's network and one's own data traffic.

Many people think that network services are just about pulling a few network cables and setting up some network hotspots, which is not difficult. But in fact, in the network field, how to serve the wireless network needs of tens of thousands of people has always been a "porcelain job" in the industry.

Networks serving tens of thousands of people often encounter the following major challenges: 1. Too many APs can easily cause signal interference with each other; 2. Dense access can easily cause serious network latency problems; 3. The stability and security requirements of the network will increase exponentially.

The WLAN deployment of the "Smart Island" is a typical "porcelain job". First, there are a large number of people, and high-density WLAN coverage of 26,000 people is required; second, the venue is high, and the construction is difficult; third, the construction period is short, and dual network coverage of wired and wireless must be achieved within 20 days; fourth, the peak value is high, with more than 4,000 concurrent users and a peak flow of 5.4G.

By analyzing the flow of people, Huawei's "Smart Island" project team provided high-density network coverage in areas where people gather, such as the exhibition hall, main venue, conference rooms, dining areas, check-in counters, corridors, etc., ensuring high-speed and stable network operations during the conference and avoiding network failures.

For Huawei, WLAN network delivery is a relatively mature and standardized service solution, which has been widely used in many major events, stadiums and other high-density venues. For example, from planning to implementation, Huawei not only has WLAN planning and design tools such as WLAN Planner, but also WLAN mobile terminal test and acceptance tool Aladdin and WLAN PC test and acceptance tool WLAN TEST.

More importantly, in WLAN operation and maintenance, with the help of new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, cloud-based operation and maintenance has been realized, greatly improving the efficiency of operation and maintenance and user experience. In the WLAN network operation and maintenance of this "Smart Island", through the application of new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence algorithms, the user experience in the network is digitized, providing analysis of each user at all times, realizing automatic identification of network faults, and accurately analyzing and locating the causes of network faults, ensuring the best business experience for the guests; and making operation and maintenance more automated and intelligent, helping administrators achieve efficient operation and maintenance.

Today, the Huawei China Ecosystem Partner Conference 2019 with 26,000 participants has come to an end, and the "Smart Island" has become a model for the industry to study.

But for all the staff involved in the creation of the "Smart Island", every challenge is the best path for growth. The spirit of craftsmanship is not something that can be expressed in words, but is acquired through practice.

Regardless of the generation, we are all in ordinary positions. We must accomplish our mission and there are always more ways than difficulties, just like what Pu Shu sang in the song "Ordinary Road": I have crossed mountains and seas and walked through crowds of people/I have asked the whole world and never got an answer/I am just like you, him, and the wild grass and flowers/This is the only way I have to go...Huawei will not stop accelerating the digital transformation of the industry...

Pay attention to the blackboard and highlight the key points!

From May 6th to 8th, the 2nd Digital China Summit will be held on this "Smart Island". Huawei will fully participate in this summit and will set up a 360+ square meter booth in Hall 6 (6A07 and 6A08), aiming to bring the most advanced digital technology and smart applications to every guest. Please stay tuned!