On Goose Island in downtown Chicago, the National Center for Cybersecurity in Manufacturing (MxD) Factory Floor Innovation Lab allows hundreds of companies — such as Siemens, Dow Chemical, John Deere, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Intel and Microsoft — to test the latest in manufacturing automation in a collaborative environment.
When Betacom, which designs and builds networks for outdoor and indoor environments, recently began providing a private 5G network for MxD, it wanted to put its best foot forward to impress these enterprises. As a result, it chose Druid Software to provide its Raemis™ 3GPP compliant 5G SA core network designed for critical enterprise communications and Airspan Networks for its small cells.
“What we’re finding is that it’s becoming this safe collaboration place where it’s very easy for all of us to be together,” said Brian Watkins, EVP Sales and Business Development, Betacom. “At MxD, we are making the manufacturers aware of what private 5G can do to drive efficiencies, and what these network solutions look like.”
Betacom, which has been in business for 30 years, has completed 900 projects in the last eight years alone for mobile network operators (MNOs). But with the introduction of Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) or OnGo, Betacom is now targeting the enterprise market with 5G-as-a-Service, the industry’s first fully-managed 5G private wireless service.
“With the CBRS spectrum and the Druid core, we’re actually able to deliver private networks as a service. We don’t just design and install, we operate and monitor the network, removing the complexity for enterprises,” Watkins said. “We have the advantage of being able to deploy private 5G on a micro scale for any company, from airports to manufacturing to logistics.”
Betacom can deploy an intelligent private wireless network in an enterprise that is more price competitive than one from an MNO, according to Watkins. Plus, the Druid core is more flexible than any technology that an MNO can provide, he added.
Network Slicing
Druid’s Raemis™ 5G platform is the brain of the private 5G network. It manages all the devices on the network and provides network slicing capability that allows different applications to be prioritized and receive a certain quality of service (QoS). The 5G RAN platform offers additional levels of separation for QoS and security, compared with 4G LTE.
“Network slicing is very important to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (known as Industry 4.0), because some of the applications using these networks are either business- or mission-critical,” Tadhg Kenny, Senior Vice President at Druid Software, said. “For example, in hospitals, we can prioritize the doctors and nursing staff communications over the administrative and maintenance staff, which don’t need real time latency.”
Simplified Management Interface
Built on an open REST API, Raemis™ provides easy integration with critical enterprise applications and makes private networks simple to use and manage with a user-friendly dashboard. The simplified management interface allows key performance indicators to be easily monitored so IT managers can make sure all devices are connected, all base stations are connected, or that throughput is at target levels.
“We’ve built a management interface, which makes cellular networks as easy to manage as WiFi,” Kenny said. “IT managers can set up and manage the network easily. And key performance indicators can be seen very easily on the dashboard.”
The enterprise PBX or voice services can be integrated into the private 5G network, as well as any kind of IP application. Each device becomes an extension of the infrastructure, Kenny said. “Our Raemis™ platform connects into the Airspan small cells and we can manage and prioritize the devices connected to those small cells.”
On today’s manufacturing floors, all of the computing power resides inside each of the robots, which is very expensive. Those costs are significantly reduced by private 5G, which allows the computing power to be located back in the mobile edge cloud and distributed to the robots as they navigate the factory floor. “The reduced latency of a private 5G network keeps the robots on track and on time,” commented Watkins.
“We were working with a couple robotics companies, and one of them shared that their robots freeze up to 20 percent of the time on Wi-Fi networks,” Watkins said. “That isn’t just a problem that creates production downtime; the robot can also run into something and cause damage.”
Another feature of private 5G is that it can connect numerous sensors on workstations that must be moved around the factory floor from day to day, depending on the production cycle. It is expensive and time consuming to rearrange a factory floor in a wired environment. But in a wireless environment, the OEM can move the workstations around at will and never have to interrupt a production cycle.
Conclusion
Today, the MxD Factory Floor, which covers 22,000 square feet, sees multiple manufacturing lines operated by innovation teams demonstrating, de-risking and validating digital technology for factories and supply chains. Along the way, they are discovering when private 5G networks are the best choice for business-critical applications that require high speed, ultra-low latency, and security, with the help of technology from Druid Software and Betacom.
Click here for a virtual tour of the MxD Factory Floor innovation lab
“Cutting-edge communication capabilities introduce the ability to get data in near real-time to make faster, better-informed decisions in manufacturing facilities across the United States,” said MxD CEO Emeritus, Chandra Brown. “5G is an enabling technology that will help unlock potential for manufacturers to be more efficient and competitive.”
For more information or to get in contact, please visit Betacom’s website and Druid’s website, or email [email protected]. To stay up to date with everything private networks follow Druid on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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