5G is considered a key technology for accelerating the digital transformation of the economy and society. In addition to higher data transmission rates, real-time transmission and the networking of machines, systems and robots in industry will become possible. A great deal of work is also being put into development and research for 5G technology in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region. At the Institute for Industrial Information Technology (iniT) of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, research associate Arne Neumann is the expert when it comes to 5G. He recently spoke at two events about the possibilities that the new mobile communications standard brings with it.
At the online event "5G - Network in OWL" held by the Bielefeld Chamber of Commerce and Industry with around 40 participants, Arne Neumann shed light on the topic of "5G as a networking concept for production." "Even though the functionality of the available 5G networks will still be gradually expanded in the coming years, now is already the right time for companies to discover and test the added value that can be achieved with this network technology in their own processes," said Neumann.
In addition to this more regional event, Arne Neumann also spoke as a speaker at the German Media Academy's Online Expert Roundtable, which attracted an audience from across Germany. The topic here was "WiFi 6 x 5G Campus: Towards a new gigabit, latency and stability race." Is WLAN making a second career? Is WiFi 6 a similar leap over WiFi 5 as 5G is over 4G? How do speed, stability and latency compare directly with 5G in practical terms, "in-house" as well as "at home" and in city centers? These and other questions were discussed in the expert roundtable.
In the expert roundtable, Arne Neumann spoke on the topic of "TACNET 4.0 - Integration of Industrial Communication Networks" and presented the research conducted at inIT on the industrial applicability of 5G. "The guaranteed assurance of performance parameters regarding data rate, transmission delay and reliability of 5G networks is a decisive advance compared to previous mobile communication standards with vague promises a la "max. 50 Mbit/s", which makes 5G technology interesting for use for various use cases in the production environment", Neumann explained.
At inIT, research on industrial 5G will be continued through the 5G4Industry project, which will be newly launched on January 01, 2021 and funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the 5G.NRW funding competition. "We are always happy to take on impulses from companies in OWL for the design," Neumann was pleased to say. The project is developing a resource management and planning tool tailored to industrial requirements and the needs of SMEs.