Nokia has deployed a private 5G standalone wireless network for Volkswagen at the automotive OEM’s main manufacturing plant in Wolfsburg, Germany.
The private network will use Nokia’s digital automation cloud (DAC) solution for secure, reliable, real-time connectivity and enable Volkswagen to trial smart factory use cases.
The deployment of the DAC will give the factory high-bandwidth and low-latency connectivity for sensors, machines, vehicles and other equipment. Under the deployment, Volkswagen will test whether the 5G technology can meet the demand requirements of vehicle production with the goal to increase efficiency and flexibility in vehicle production of the future.
Initial use cases include:
- Wireless upload of data to manufactured vehicles.
- Intelligent networking of robots and wireless assembly tools.
- Processing data at the network edge in real time.
- The network will operate in the dedicated 3.7 to 3.8 GHz band for local private wireless networks.
Non-standalone (NSA) 5G technology, which has been the bulk of the 5G networks deployed worldwide, uses 4G infrastructure already in place and piggybacks on the 5G signal through this equipment. Because 4G infrastructure has been deployed globally, the NSA equipment is more plentiful than standalone 5G equipment currently installed worldwide. However, standalone infrastructure is growing in deployment.
Standalone (SA) 5G uses new infrastructure put in place specifically to run 5G networks allowing smart devices and other potential use cases to take advantage of the high download speed, high bandwidth and low latency that the technology affords.
SA is seen as the best way to provide the speeds, latency and bandwidth that 5G affords to its fullest extent and the technology is being adopted quickly as 5G becomes more ubiquitous worldwide.
