As part of the second 5G.NRWeek organized by the 5G.NRW Competence Center, a virtual trip to the 5G test and demo centers in North Rhine-Westphalia was on the agenda on Friday, September 10. The SmartFactoryOWL, a joint facility of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts and Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, was also a destination of this trip, as this is where the first 5G campus network in East Westphalia went into operation at the beginning of 2020. inIT board member Dr. Lukasz Wisniewski, together with his Fraunhofer colleagues Dr. Sebastian Schriegel and Timo Siekmann, presented the current research work on the located 5G system.
SmartFactoryOWL is an ideal test site for applications in 5G networks. In addition to very time-intensive control applications, the networking of data analytics applications and autonomous transport vehicles with 5G will also be tested. The corresponding examples of autonomous transport systems, intelligent workpiece carriers and outsourcing of computationally intensive control algorithms to computing clusters, which are being analyzed by the Lemgo researchers, clearly show how diverse the industrial application possibilities of 5G are.
"Companies in the region are sincerely invited to discover these and other possible applications with us. To implement them beneficially for their own processes together with our research team from inIT and Fraunhofer. With us, you can draw on the full expertise," invites Dr. Wisniewski.
In addition to SmartFactoryOWL, the Accentures Industry X Innovation Center in Essen, the Testing Center in Aldenhoven and the 5G-Industry Campus Europe in Aachen were also presented.
Accompanying the 5G.NRWeek, InnoZent OWL e. V. offered with the 5G OWL Week a space where representatives from industry and research in the region could get into conversation with each other. Can OWL become a pioneer region for the new 5G technology? What are the benefits of 5G for society and the environment? These background questions accompanied the week and on Friday afternoon corresponding research projects from the region were presented and discussed.
inIT member Arne Neumann reported there live from the SmartFactoryOWL about research results on the holistic management of heterogeneous industrial networks including 5G. One focus is on the real-time capable coupling of 5G with Industrial Ethernet.
"Of course, 5G initially increases the complexity of industrial communication. With our research, we are helping to ensure that this complexity does not burden the user, but that algorithms and tools automatically adjust and optimize the network," explains Neumann.
These results were obtained in the BMBF-funded TACNET4.0 project, and some aspects are being explored in greater depth in the 5G4Industry project, which is funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.