Germany starts major European 5G industrial technology project
The Fraunhofer Institute, in charge of the project, reported that the largest European industrial research network for the fifth generation of mobile telephony and 5G Internet is being created at the Technical University of Aachen (RWTH)
Under the direction of the Fraunhofer Institute of Production Technologies (IPT), and together with entities associated with the project, applications and solutions for network production will be developed and tested using the new mobile phone standard.
The project will have the support of the German Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure for the next three years, which allocates 6.2 million euros (6.9 million dollars) for this purpose, according to information from the Fraunhofer Institute. The network infrastructure will be provided by the Swedish company Ericsson.
The so-called “5G Europe Industry Campus” (European Industrial Field 5G) on the Melaten site of the Technical University of Aachen consists of an exterior surface area of approximately one square kilometer and an area of 7,000 square meters in several machinery rooms. The IPT stressed that the facility is equipped with “an infrastructure so far unique.”
The goal of the project is to investigate different application scenarios. In particular, it concerns the concrete use in the industry, such as 5G sensor technology for the supervision of complex manufacturing processes, the use of mobile robotics and the implementation of production chains in different plants.
Niels König, director of scientific projects of the IPT, said that the research will provide producing companies with important knowledge about the technical possibilities and the potential for application of 5G.
To ensure that the results can also be transferred to real environments, participating partners want to use the frequency ranges of 3.5 to 3.8 gigahertz, which are specially designed for industrial plants. These are frequencies that were not sold at the 5G auction in June , but were reserved independently for so-called campus networks.
“Industrial history is being written today in Aachen,” said Jan-Peter Meyer-Kahlen, director of the Eurolab research and development center in Ericsson, based near Aachen. Meyer-Kahlen stressed that a unique ecosystem is being created in the world for research and development of 5G technologies for industry 4.0.
Source: dpa
