19/08/2024

5G technology is expected to be the game changer for different economy areas in term of connectivity improvement. While waiting for public 5G to be widely deployed and commercialized, especially in developing country, manufacturing which is required to be smarter is the one having the need to utilize 5G’s advanced capabilities in a private 5G network. Let’s together investigate how the idea will be implemented

1. Advanced capabilities of 5G

5G’s speed is faster than previous generations, potentially 100 times faster than 4G.
5G provides higher bandwidth and low latency, letting applications and communications running on 5G connect and share data in near real-time.
5G also supports massive simultaneous connections of user equipment & devices (sensor, camera, robot…) which is very useful in the IoT industry and Automotive Industry for example.

2. Benefits of 5G in Smart Factory

With the mass trend of Digital Transformation (DX) recently, 5G will play an important role to improve environment connectivity for every corner of economic sector with its promising capabilities to resolve existing limitations. Manufacturing is gradually evolving itself to the next level of intelligent and smart industry, with lots of promising changes.

Factories today mostly use wired or wireless technologies (Wi-Fi) for operation, but reliability and scalability are still a concern. 5G technology with its advanced features obviously can play the role of a key changer across entire manufacturing value chain, delivering three key advantages:

Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB): The significantly higher data rates of 5G – reaching up to 10 Gbps – are far greater than Wi-Fi or any cellular wireless mechanism. This obviously will bring huge value for many manufacturing applications, especially mission-critical manufacturing applications.
Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC): low latency in data transmission will help improve the performance of robots, devices & automation machines in the factory. This will help improve reliability of factory operations.
Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC): 5G augments IoT capacity by supporting a high number of sensors and devices with increasing data volume, leading to massively connected factories.

3. 5G Private Network for Smart Factory

While the public network of 5G requires huge investment and is suitable for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) or large enterprises with support from the government, private network would be a better choice for such industries as manufacturing.

Private 5G is a standalone network focused on industrial operational assets and users. A private 5G network provides wireless broadband connectivity, like a public wireless network but is owned and controlled by the organization that built or purchased it. Industry verticals and public sector domains such as mining, utilities, factories, warehouses, ports, airports, public safety, and smart cities are all appropriate candidates for private 5G and are already using such networks to help digitalize their operations.

Some advantages of 5G Private Network:

Appropriate budget investment for environmental infrastructure.
Easy to deploy and maintain with flexibility.
Strong security ability with data privacy protection and built-in encryption and authentication capabilities.
Private network can run in isolation, where the company wants physical ownership and control over all components on-premise, without reliance on external data centers.
Support voice interconnection between private network and public
Mission-critical reliability to keep systems up and running, especially for robots and automation machines.
Meet growing demands and a single wireless network for operational technology needs with predictable high data rates and low latency, but also support critical voice and low power sensors, cameras, and factory devices.

4. Use cases of 5G Private Network in Smart Factory

Infrastructure:

Infrastructure management: automated tracking and monitoring facilities for smart factories.
Video surveillance: using cameras & drones for real-time monitoring.
Security: real-time response to security incidents and supervision using video analytics.

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) solution:

Instead of sending all the data to central server or cloud for processing, Edge Computing platform bring the capability of the edge network to analyze, process, and store the data at the edge (region) site which closer to users. This will potentially help systems to operate with low latency and decrease work load of data center or central cloud site.

Operational Technology
- Connected Warehouses: Enabling inventory control platforms, AGV Robots, warehouse management systems.
- Logistics: Monitoring environmental conditions of the consignment, location tracking, route optimization.

5. About TMA Technology Group

TMA Technology Group has 26 years of experience in providing software development services, not only in Telecom & Wireless technology sector but also in other trending technologies like IoT, AI, Data Science, Robotics, and Automotive. The ecosystem that we have today can help enterprises and manufacturing owners build up their smart factories with a full solution involving the different technologies above.

TMA offers below relevant services: