Manufacturing Today Issue - 219 December 2023 | Page 19

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5G
others . This organization was born to deal with the technological evolution of 5G to be able to serve the real requirements of industrial players . Initially , 5G had many gaps in the industrial world and these have been tackled , one-by-one , with help from institutions like 5GACIA . Some examples here are the use of TSN in 5G , and the implementation of protocols like Profinet over 5G . During this time , existing and new vendors have adapted their products to deal with these very specific challenges and stringent requirements of the top industrial players . A more competitive ecosystem has also started to push down prices of devices .
Lastly , I believe what will continue to drive MPN forward is the consensus that there is a strong business case in implementing 5G for end consumers . The value comes from combining or stacking different applications such as reliable coverage , video streaming , autonomous mobile robots and more .
When it comes to reliable coverage , there have been deployments where just one 5G / 4G radio has been able to replace up to ten
Wi-Fi access points . Not just the CapEx but also the OpEx and deployment complexity are reduced in such cases . Reliability is also superior , thanks to enforceable QoS , as is better performance , particularly in environments with metal reflections . Reliable coverage can enable significant productivity gains on basic routines performed by field operators .
In terms of video streaming , one of the main reasons for deploying dedicated 5G radios is video uplink . Public networks from the carriers are optimized for downlink , and streaming of UHD video is not well supported . Video streaming can come from employee devices like smartphones and / or more fancy AR headsets which are gaining traction over time .
Autonomous mobile robots ( AMRs ) have also contributed to the growth of 5G , particularly in manufacturing . Robots deployed at scale automatically generate higher demand on the wireless network . Wi-Fi is not great with handovers and AMRs can really suffer from this . Lost robots either
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