Ericsson has consolidated its 5G presence in Germany and completed a proof of concept on how network slicing can improve 5G networks.
The vendor has added a new proof of concept centre and incubator space to its existing cloud lab in Aachen, which was opened last year to run early technology demonstrations and research.
The Sweden-based company announced this morning the new proof of concept centre would be an open trial facility to encourage the early deployment of 5G technology. Ericsson identified critical machine type communications, adaptive smart grids, self-driving cars and automated manufacturing as the key use cases.
The Ericcson garage will serve as the incubator space for prototyping and creating new kinds of products and solutions.
Ulf Ewaldsson, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson, said: “Industrial use cases will be extremely important for the success of 5G and we see Germany driving innovation in Industry 4.0. Our collaboration with RWTH, one of the leading institutes in this area, is an excellent opportunity to gain first-hand experience and allows us to fine tune 5G based solutions.”
[Read more – Ericsson CTO: Europe lacks “essential” aggression in shift towards 5G]
Meanwhile, Ericsson and NTT DOCOMO have completed a proof of concept on how network slicing can improve the quality of 5G networks.
The technology virtualises one physical network into several co-existing networks that can offer different types of services.
This proof of concept showed how varying 5G services could be autonomously allocated to individual slices, allow operators to line up specific rates of latency, security and capacity according to demand.
The Japanese operator designed the network slice creation and selection functions, while Ericsson produced technology to run the network slices and manage the services based on its commercial cloud products.
The proof of concept will be demonstrated as part of an augmented reality application at this month’s 5G World in London.
Hiroshi Nakamura, Senior Vice President and General Manager of R&D Strategy Department, NTT DOCOMO, said: “Network slicing has the potential to simultaneously deliver diverse cutting-edge 5G services, for enhanced entertainment as well as further effective and secure communication. We expect the results of our PoC with Ericsson will play an important role in the realisation of highly efficient and secure 5G networking technologies.”
Håkan Djuphammar, Vice President and Head of Technology, Business Unit Cloud and IP, Ericsson, said: “This PoC demonstrates the capability of 5G to support fast, efficient and flexible introduction of new services, and to enable differentiated characteristics like speed, latency and capacity.”