Ericsson and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (IPT) have launched 5G-Industry Campus Europe, the continent’s largest industrial 5G research network, to jointly explore with companies and research partners further areas in which 5G can be applied within production and to test these as practically as possible.
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) is funding the consortium, which Fraunhofer IPT is coordinating on the Melaten campus at RWTH Aachen University, to the tune of almost €6.2 million in order to set up the regional 5G research network. Fraunhofer IPT has selected Ericsson as its private 5G networks supplier.
The project partners at 5G-Industry Campus Europe will investigate application scenarios in seven sub-projects within the field of production. These include 5G sensors for monitoring and controlling highly complex manufacturing processes to mobile robotics, logistics and multi-site production chains.
In addition, scientists at RWTH Aachen University want to test the use of modern edge cloud systems for fast data processing to exploit the potential of 5G in a networked, adaptive production. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, were updated on the progress and benefits of 5G-Industry Campus Europe during a visit to the Hannover Messe trade fair in March 2019.
5G-Industry Campus Europe’s outdoor private networks at RWTH Aachen University cover an area of about 1 km sq. Its indoor private networks – in the machine halls of the participating partners, which represent all fields of production technology – cover an area of almost 7,000 m sq.
The facilities are equipped with state-of-the-art IT and production systems, offering unique infrastructure to jointly test individual 5G and IoT applications together with the research partners and develop these earlier than usual. This means the partners can benefit directly from 5G-Industry Campus Europe.
