It looks inconspicuous at first: an official certificate from the Federal Network Agency, a base station with an antenna, a radio measuring station and a transport robot that looks like a remote-controlled car - with this equipment, the researchers in Lemgo are now entering the 5G age. They have been operating one of the first private 5G networks in Germany since March.

With the new 5G network, the Lemgo site is once again demonstrating its pioneering role in industrial communication, says Prof. Jürgen Jasperneite, Head of Fraunhofer IOSB-INA. "Two weeks ago, we received the frequency allocation and operating license from the Federal Network Agency for a private network. We now have the corresponding hardware for the 5G base station and the core network in-house, so that we can now work on and test a wide range of use cases together with partners in research and industry projects."

The ultimate goal that the scientists have in mind To develop new industrial applications and business models for automation and production.

5G: Flexible resource assurance

The special thing about 5G wireless technology is that it is suitable for applications that require transmission and response times of less than a thousandth of a second. In contrast to WLAN, the main advantage is that the quality of service (speed and transmission time) can be guaranteed with the help of "network slicing". This gives the operator of a private 5G network complete control over the available resources and a high degree of flexibility. Together with a computing cluster (edge computing) already available in the SmartFactoryOWL, there is a test field for many real-time applications.

One area of application for 5G in industry is the control of mobile robots or the remote control of automated machines and systems. Another example is driverless transport systems in intralogistics, which can be bundled and controlled from a computing cluster in the factory. "All data-intensive applications with high bandwidth requirements, such as virtual reality or big data applications - in product start-up phases or service cases - will find a suitable technology in 5G," summarizes Jasperneite.