For factories, 5.5G is simply beautiful

Note: in this interview, Prof. Luthje refers both to 5.5G, and to 5G-A, which stands for 5G Advanced. Both terms refer to the same technology. 

What is 5.5G, and what does it enable us to do?

It’s just an enhanced version of 5G. But it is a huge leap in capacity, and in latency: the reaction time of the network gets much shorter. This is what you need to deploy 5G in the networks of advanced factories.

That’s especially true when you want to connect robots. You need a lot of data to move them. Previous generations of mobile communications have not been powerful enough to do this. But with 5G, it's possible to use mobile communications in factories.

What specifically does it enable in vertical industries such as mining, manufacturing, and health care?

For manufacturing,it enables us to put the whole digital network for the factory on mobile communications. Until now, the big data networks always have operated using cables. So in factories with a lot of robots, you’d also see a lot of cables – in the corners, and on the factory floor. These cables usually are very difficult to maintain, and often difficult to install. And they are the main source of failure for these networks: someone can hit a cable, or a cable can get wet, or someone runs it over with a forklift. This is one of the main sources for downtime in production in digitalized factories.

Now, as everything is transmitted by mobile technology, you don't have this problem. In addition, the 5GA standards simplify the data architecture. Before that, you needed one channel for upload, and one channel for download, at different speeds. That means two cables for each device. So this is a big step towards simplicity. That’s the beauty of this technology: it makes things simple.

Tell us about the importance of data protection when it comes to 5.5G.

Data protection is the key issue for digitalization of production. Companies are eager to protect their production data, as it’s potentially the secret of their success. This is one major issue why many small and medium-sized enterprises have thus far been hesitant to go on the cloud. There is widespread fear that the cloud operator may do some bad things with the production data. For this, of course you need standard architecture, and you need manufacturing companies to protect the data.

This is not just one company, it’s about whole industries. When you want to connect a whole industrial park with 5GA, you need a unified architecture of data protection for all the companies, something that's easy to use, easy to understand, and safe. This is something we can learn from mobile communications technology, where this kind of data protection has been deployed in a public space. And we are talking about public spaces; we are talking about making manufacturing infrastructure public.

What are about some of the other challenges that we’ll face, the obstacles ahead for 5.5G?

From a business point of view, of course there’s cost. That's the first thing. The second big challenge is data protection. The third challenge is the human factor. You need engineers, you need specialists who can run this new technology. This holds out big potential for small and medium-sized enterprises, because it will be easier to use. You won’t have to hire a large number of engineers when you introduce new digital equipment. For example, when you introduce robots today, usually the biggest bottleneck for small and medium-sized enterprises is the engineers you need to hire. So 5GA may provide for a more gradual, evolutionary way into factory digitalization, which also means the issues of labor, training, and education may be easier to solve in the future, if we do it right.