As a sign of where industrial-grade 5G is really up to, the announcement from German firm Siemens that it has opened a mainly-5G test lab at its main research campus in the south of the southern city of Erlangen says it remains a technology-under-review by the serious-minded Industry 4.0 market. Siemens, if we remember, has only just soft-launched its own private 5G system, and only for enterprises at home, utilising the 3.7-3.8 GHz ‘vertical’ industry band. It has maintained, all along, that 5G is a post-2024 market, and the ribbon-cutting in Bavaria says the same.
Importantly, but unsurprisingly, it is pitching its lab (called an Industrial Connectivity Lab) as a mash-up venue for industrial organisations to test out a whole bunch of IoT-geared wireless tech in combination with its private 5G system – including wireless local-area networking (WLAN; basically fortified Wi-Fi), plus various real-time localization systems (RTLS) for positing assets in factories and warehouses, and wherever else, and various radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies for scanning them, too.
The new lab facility, carved out of the Siemens Technology Center at the Erlangen campus, has a footprint of 300 square metres; Siemens is inviting customers to check out how an in-house 5G network dovetails with these other technologies in service of certain industrial IoT use cases. “Users [can] test application scenarios and interoperability in industrial conditions,” it said in a statement. A local 3.7-3.8 GHz licence, owned by Siemens, covers the site, which is running a “complete private 5G infrastructure developed by Siemens”; the WLAN gear is from Siemens, too.
Siemens noted the bespoke demands of industrial connectivity, and the need to validate deployments for customers. It said: “A variety of scenarios for localization solutions can also be tested with high accuracy via the RTLS system installed on-site. In addition, industrial identification solutions using RFID are available for users in the lab. Finally, remote control and remote maintenance scenarios can also be studied on-site via a DSL connection… In addition, the lab also serves as a training and education environment and is used for Siemens’ internal technology tests.”
Axel Lorenz, chief executive for process automation at Siemens, commented: “The increasing convergence of OT and IT… is creating enormous demand for custom solutions. Many users find it difficult to assess the benefits and framework conditions of wireless technologies in their own operations. The lab offers… to combine different technologies and test them in industrial conditions. Experts [can] advise customers on all established wireless technologies – and test them in real industrial conditions. This is how customers get the desired performance and also save time and costs before installation in their own facilities.”
