Marine preservation is best achieved through integrated sensing and communications based on 5G-A

Ocean ecosystems are a vital source of food and biodiversity, but are coming under increasing pressure from offshore human activity, threatening their role in maintaining ecological balance. The waters around Xiamen Bay for instance, which are home to the Chinese white dolphin, are now heavily affected by marine engineering projects and dense maritime traffic, including ferries, fishing boats, engineering vessels, and speedboats. This ongoing surge in activity across the dolphin’s core habitat has led to an increase in deaths, and there has been a 30% reduction in the observed activity times of the animal in the decade to 2020.

This alarming trend highlights the urgent need for enhanced monitoring and effective law enforcement to protect this iconic species – and to create scalable tools which can then be deployed elsewhere for effective marine preservation. There are numerous barriers however to effective monitoring and protection of marine conservation zones. 24/7 monitoring is expensive, in terms of both manpower and equipment, and coastal law enforcement agencies often lack sophisticated tools either for long-range surveillance (especially at night) or rapid, anytime data access.

What’s needed is a way to draw on the latest connected technologies to both increase the effectiveness of conservation efforts and also mitigate their cost. The Wildlife guardian AI + 5G advanced sustainable application Catalyst, which won the Outstanding Catalyst – Tech for Good 2024 Catalyst Award, is aimed at precisely this goal – by creating a marine monitoring and response system based on an integrated sensing and communication system deployed via 5G-Advanced networks, or ‘5G-A ISAC’.

How 5G-A ISAC enables advanced AI monitoring and analytics

5G-A ISAC technology underpins an all-weather, multi-dimensional sensing network across the conservation area, which is used to identify ships at sea and reduce the impact of their activities on wildlife. By combining 5G-A base stations, radar systems, visual terminals and other data-sharing interfaces, an innovative real-time data exchange and intelligent processing system between vessels and shore operations is made possible – achieving continuous and precise perception with a coverage range of up to 20km.

An AI-based supervision system can therefore oversee the conservation area to monitor vessel densities and collision risks. The system collects navigation data, and integrates critical meteorological, hydrological, and marine engineering operation data. This data fusion supports rapid decision-making by analyzing and identifying abnormal behaviors, issuing alerts, and prompting emergency response services where needed. By fusing multi-source, spatiotemporal data on navigation and power operations, the solution further enables advanced reasoning and data interpretation, providing actionable insights for managing the conservation zone.

As with any new technology, 5G-A ISAC brings with it new challenges, so AI was also used for intelligent network operations and maintenance. AI algorithms served to automatically identify abnormal antenna attitudes, improving the accuracy of fault identification and reducing the time needed to repair faults. Changes in ship distribution could be also perceived algorithmically in real time, with dynamic adjustment of ISAC antenna coverage to achieve collaboration between communication and sensing network services. A signal punching scheme was additionally designed to solve communication interference when sensing to ensure optimal performance.

Early successes trialling 5G-A ISAC in marine conservation

This Catalyst demonstrates the potential of 5G-A ISAC to achieve major improvements in coastal monitoring – with missed detection probability and false alarm rates both down by around 10%, while vehicle sensing accuracy improved by a remarkable 90% on legacy methods. The real-time updates on illegal ship behavior made possible led to a 40% increase in the efficiency of related law enforcement activities, while the precise tracking and close integration of front- and back-end systems have yielded manpower savings of around 30%. At the network level, the time required for fault rectification was reduced by 70%, while use of 5G-A ISAC base stations is projected to save around $4 million in construction costs.

The solution therefore not only enhances the monitoring efficiency of conservation areas, helping to safeguard vulnerable species and ecosystems, but also significantly reduces management complexity and associated costs. This creates a win-win scenario in which the financial incentives of preservation efforts can be aligned with the best possible results. As China Mobile’s Yuan Yao explains, “this project, which couples 5G-A ISAC with AI, marks a significant step forward in the protection of marine life, showcasing future trends of technological convergence and intelligent automation. This Catalyst points to a future where technology, intelligent data analysis, and environmental sustainability work in concert to transform industries and protect our natural world.”