RESEARCH NEWS
5G Open RAN for manufacturing
A new £ 4.7-million project developing ways to make 5G Open RAN more accessible and fit for purpose for the manufacturing sector has been launched by an industrial consortium of partners .
The Factory of the Future Open RAN ( FoFoRAN ) project aims to explore ways that manufacturers of all sizes could benefit from open radio access networks ( Open RAN ), a concept of mobile network architecture that provides the use of non-proprietary sub-components from a variety of vendors . It enables technology from different companies to work together , instead of using just one single supplier .
The programme , which has secured £ 2.7- million as part of the UK government ’ s Open Networks Research and Development Fund , is also being match-funded by industry . It is being led by research engineers at AMRC North West , part of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre ( AMRC ) innovation cluster and a member of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult .
BAE Systems , Dassault Systèmes , aql , Productive Machines and SafeNetics are partners in the project with the support of the Royal Air Force and British telecommunications company Telent , who are affiliate partners on the project .
Dr . Aparajithan Sivanathan , head of digital technology at AMRC North West , based in Samlesbury , Lancashire ( UK ), highlighted the huge demand for manufacturers of all sizes to have greater connectivity , higher bandwidth and near-zero latency of 5G to function effectively . This runs alongside the need , he said , to help open up the telecoms supply chain so that different companies can provide different parts of the 5G infrastructure .
“ The current choice of manufacturing industries for 5G deployment is singlevendor solutions but it ’ s an option that , in some ways , is inflexible and does not address all the unique requirements of advanced use cases of connected manufacturing and is unaffordable for smaller manufacturing businesses ,” he said .
“ Individual manufacturers need the freedom to choose components that are fit for purpose and have network vendor options , equipment suppliers and services at varying costs . Open RAN has the potential to be more affordable , interoperable , secure , reliable and to provide the capabilities needed in industry . We are excited to build
The FoFoRAN project is helping to innovate ways to build a resilient communications structure within the 5G telecoms supply chain . The image shows a human , robot and AI sharing space enabled by 5G .
on our research in Open RAN in the hope of creating further innovative solutions in these areas .”
Project focus and trials
An investment of £ 88 million , as part of the government ’ s Open Networks Research and Development Fund , has been allocated to 19 different projects and will trial an array of new mobile technologies , designed to increase the resilience of the UK mobile network , enhancing competition and innovation within the 5G telecoms supply chain and ensuring that the country is not overly reliant on any one form of technology .
Planned to run until March 2025 , the FoFoRAN project aims to deploy an Open RAN network from scratch and extend as well as test a partially existing highly interoperable network , comprising components from different vendors , to explore the interoperable characteristics . It will use an existing functional singlevendor network as a benchmark ; compare a true Open RAN approach with a highly interoperable network approach and build / test native 5G , high-performance devices with manufacturing communication interfaces .
The project focus areas will help to determine how it compares to the current commercial-off-the shelf , single-vendor network deployment and will assess technical characteristics , performance and any potential deployment challenges . It will also help to identify whether it is possible to standardise network services for digital manufacturing use cases .
AMRC North West is one of the UK leaders in exploring 5G connectivity in the manufacturing sector and has its own digital manufacturing connectivity testbed , developed as part of the ‘ 5G Factory of the Future ’ programme . Consortium partners in FoFoRAN bring a wide array of additional knowledge and proficiency to the project including cyber security , use cases and software / network solutions . n
www . amrc . co . uk
18 | ismr . net | ISMR April 2024