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KPN has opened an Industry 5G Fieldlab on the Brainport Industries Campus (BIC) in Eindhoven – its second in the Netherlands. While the Rotterdam site at Shell Pernis focuses on the process industry, the newly launched lab is aimed at 5G in manufacturing, which has different use cases. Together with the BIC, KPN will set up targeted Smart Industry projects with the new generation of mobile network technology.
KPN’s customers in the manufacturing industry and established parties on the BIC will have the opportunity to experience the benefits of 5G in a representative environment. The telecom provider will make the network available indoors on campus, including the 3.5 GHz frequency, which is ideally suited for testing high-bandwidth use cases. “We can already start working with 5G indoors at 3.5 GHz, as opposed to 3.5 GHz outdoors – which can only be used in 2022-2023,” says KPN’s Paul Cobben.
Furthermore, KPN is combining 5G indoors with Ultrawideband. UWB is used to track objects on the factory floor and in warehouses in real time. Their position can be determined with up to thirty centimeters accuracy, and often even more accurately.
Cobben: “In this 5G field lab for the manufacturing industry, we’ll soon be able to show everyone which 5G indoor use cases are possible in a factory environment. Think of virtual and augmented reality for production control, autonomous AGVs and 4K cameras for quality and safety, to name but a few. It’s not just about speed, but also about reliability and very low network latency. Unlocking large numbers of wireless sensors will also play an important role in the further rollout of the IoT. With this, we make it clear that 5G can be used for very different applications simultaneously.”
