Fortress base station, the name may be a little scary, let a lot of people have doubts or even think it may be a professional term for online games, but are actually not. The full name of Fortress Base Station is “New Disaster Resistant Fortress Base Station”, which is a reinforced base station specially designed and constructed to be used in harsh disaster resistant environments to maintain smooth and timely communications.
With the increasing frequency of major natural disasters in recent years due to extreme weather around the world, for example, extreme rainfall weather, which triggers geological disasters such as flooding and landslides, has caused huge losses.
After a natural disaster, some base stations are flooded, some have power outages, and some have transmission interruptions. This ultimately resulted in the absence of cell phone signals in all the surrounding areas that were originally covered by signals, which seriously affected the disaster victims’ ability to call for rescue and report safety, as well as the dispatch and coordination of disaster relief personnel.
Especially when the capital city of China, Beijing, was hit by heavy rainfall and flooding in the previous year, some of the rivers, bridges and houses in villages were severely damaged, and water, electricity and signals were once cut off, which triggered national concern. With the joint efforts of the Beijing General Administration of Communications, telecom operators, tower companies and other parties, in June 2024, the first “fortress base station” was successfully completed in Fozizhuang, Fangshan District, Beijing.
According to the plan, a total of 18 fortress base stations will be built in Beijing in 2024, located in Mentougou District (8), Fangshan District (9) and Changping District (1). The investment cost of a single bastion base station is around 2-4 million RMB (about 285,000-572,000 USD).
What’s So Special About Fortress Base Station?
Next, let’s take a closer look at what makes a fortress base station different from a regular base station. What makes it a “fortress”?
Fortress base station for the earthquake, flood, typhoon, ice and snow and other extreme disaster scenarios, targeted to improve the base station communication equipment, power supply, transmission, civil engineering, installation process and other construction standards, so as to have a very high resistance to damage and emergency communications security capabilities.
In the event of a disaster, the most vulnerable aspects of a base station are the power supply and transmission resources.
In terms of power, the fortress base station is equipped with specialized storage batteries (lead crystal battery backup) and oil machine (50Kw). It is required to support 144 hours of power backup for 4G equipment in case of emergency (24 hours for storage battery and 120 hours for oil engine).
In terms of transmission, “fiber optic cable + satellite” is adopted.
Fiber optic cables are mainly buried directly, and in order to ensure the safety of the inbound and outbound routes, it is equipped with two different physical routes of fiber optic cables to ensure the independence of the two inbound and outbound routes.
In the case of satellite, it is equipped with high-throughput satellite transmission system and modem, which can realize automatic switching through the equipment in the base station.
In terms of station structure, it adopts concrete frame structure and high-strength hot-rolled steel reinforcement, with seismic defense intensity of 9°.
In terms of snow disaster resistance, the snow load resistance is not less than 0.60KN/㎡, which can withstand the blizzard disaster of one in a hundred years.
In terms of wind disaster resistance, the wind pressure is not less than 0.65KN/㎡, and it can withstand 12-level wind.
The base station also needs to be equipped with perfect emergency equipment and facilities, such as fire extinguishing equipment, emergency broadcasting equipment, hand/foot generator equipment, Beidou short message equipment, security monitoring camera equipment, etc., which are used to cope with various emergencies.
In Conclusion
All in all, the Bastion Base Station is an initiative taken by the Beijing Municipal Government in response to natural disasters and an innovation in building a “resilient city”. In an emergency, these special base stations can effectively ensure the smooth flow of the “communication lifeline” and reduce the loss of life and property caused by disasters. Beijing’s practice of establishing fortress base stations is worthy of emulation in important regions and areas around the world.