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Upgrade of the 5G system at SmartFactoryOWL

Technology brought up to date

Arne Neumann (left) and Lukas Martenvormfelde (right) show the new 5G Base Station at SmartFactoryOWL.

For about one and a half years now, the two Lemgo-based research institutions Institute Industrial IT (inIT) of TH OWL and Fraunhofer IOSB-INA have been operating the first private 5G network in East Westphalia-Lippe in the SmartFactoryOWL. Together, they want to use the new mobile communications standard for industrial applications and develop new use cases and business models for automation and production. The initial equipment at the time included two LTE+ base stations, a 5G core network with release 13, and a transport robot.

Now the 5G system has been upgraded once again so that the technology installed in SmartFactoryOWL is up to date. "We have upgraded our 5G core network to release 15 and installed a new 5G base station. This means that we can now test all the mechanisms that can be used in private 5G networks in SmartFactoryOWL," explains inIT board member Lukasz Wisniewski.

The base station will soon be installed under the ceiling of the Lemgo research and demonstration factory. Then the entire production area can be covered with the 5G network. The first practical application is a mobile robot networked via 5G and WLAN. In this application, the scientists investigate the respective advantages and disadvantages of the two technologies. They take into account the different grid load conditions.