Reporting from GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY, the company announced that it has created, in partnership with Verizon, a testbed to study 5G applications across a number of industries. According to the Times-Union, research will concentrate on aviation, healthcare, and energy.
“Together with Verizon, we are leading the way in innovating on 5G,” stated GE’s Chief Technology Officer, Vic Abate. “It marks a pivotal moment for the industrial world, as we finally have a wireless network platform that delivers the speed, scale, reliability and flexibility to connect industrial devices in a truly transformative way.”
Ben Verschueren, who runs the Forge Lab at GE Research, explained the testbed is exploring ways to cross-reference data to make maximum use of the available technology. “Today we are dependent on custom wireless protocols to achieve levels of reliability and security that we require for continuous monitoring and patient privacy,” Verschueren said of healthcare applications.
“With 5G, those capabilities are all built in.” He pointed out that the same ability to compile data could also benefit energy industries like wind farms. “If I actually start enabling things like industrialized controls over a wireless communication protocol like 5G I can now open up the possibilities of doing full wind farm control,” he said. “I can put more sensors on the blades of those turbines, I can get that data faster, more reliably, more quantity, which enables better analytics, better outcomes.”
The partnership between GE and Verizon will allow the two businesses the mutual opportunity to add to its own database from the independent research each entity has conducted. “This testbed gives us a network with unprecedented speed and bandwidth and positions us well to carry out research programs that combine digital technologies like augmented reality, sensors, and robotics,” said GE’s senior director of technical products, Eric Tucker. “It increases the scale at which we can develop and test these technologies to improve industrial assets and systems like wind turbines or whole wind farms, or in healthcare, to improve patient care within the halls of the hospital… and beyond.”
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