Siemens has said its new home-grown industrial 5G system will be available in the summer finally, with availability in Germany initially, followed by Brazil subsequently, and other European and global markets in line with demand. The Brazilian launch is made simple by the fact the country has released the same 3.7-3.8 GHz band for enterprises to run private 5G networks; it will raise the bandwidth capability in the RAN system to meet the 3.8-4.2 GHz band, around which most of the rest of Europe is congregating.
Siemens has built the entire system from scratch, it said, including the core network, and the various CU, DU, and RU (central, distributed, and radio unit) components that comprise the RAN piece. The solution runs on Siemens’ own industrial PCs. It is distinguished in the market as OT-grade and SME-friendly, it said. In other words, it explained, its private 5G solution is robust, suitable for “harsh industrial conditions”, and also “compact” and “user friendly”.
A “prototype” (its language, still) of the system is “successfully working” in a Siemens manufacturing site Karlsruhe, attached to Germany’s 3.7-3.8 GHz enterprise band. It is also testing with unnamed customers, it said.
In conversation with RCR Wireless at Hannover Messe this week (to be published next week), Siemens restated that its timing is good, and that the industrial market is only just-about ready for 5G. In a press statement, it reiterated that “challenges persist”, and that 5G is a developing technology, with the tech capabilities set out in the 3GPP release schedule generally only available in commercial products three years after they are frozen in the standard.
“What’s more,” it wrote, “most of the industry specific features are part of the newer releases – and products follow roughly three years after the corresponding release.” It also noted that 5G user equipment is hard to come by, and “insufficiently developed”. It wrote: “Once this has been resolved an uptake in… private industrial 5G… is to be expected.” Indeed, the message from Hannover, generally, is that most private 5G deployments are proofs and trials.
Siemens will position private 5G as an extension of its industrial networking business, and seek to popularise the technology on the ‘shop floor’, in particular. It said: “The rise of industrial 5G networks… presents an opportunity to bridge the gap between IT and OT, enabling a new era of industrial automation and digital transformation. Industrial 5G… enables seamless comms between devices, sensors, and systems across both IT and OT environments.”
It flagged the higher-grade latency, reliability, and control afforded by private 5G networks in private spectrum, by virtue of the technology’s eMBB broadband and URLLC reliability capabilities, useful for mobile robots, autonomous logistics, and automated guided vehicles (AGVs). It also pointed to the ability for it to support ‘massive’ volumes of industrial sensors, as per 3GPP’s mMTC prescription. Security is another aspect, which Siemens is putting new focus on.
Axel Lorenz, chief executive of process automation at Siemens, said: “The convergence of IT and OT enables the digital enterprise. It lays the foundation for data-driven decision making. The integration of IT and OT systems requires a robust comms infrastructure that can handle the demands of both realms. Private industrial 5G networks, with their URLLC capacity, offer the perfect solution for connecting these two domains.”
