Fraunhofer Will Demonstrate 5G Solutions for Industrial IoT at MWC

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits will present its latest mobile communication developments towards 5G at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Live demonstrations will show how advancements in positioning and low-latency communication are accelerating industrial processes.

Wireless low-latency communication and high-precision positioning will enhance flexibility in industrial production processes. Moreover, industrial and especially production environments pose demanding requirements on reliability, latency, and positioning accuracy needed for seamless interaction between machines. The upcoming mobile communication standard 5G addresses these enhanced requirements.

Fraunhofer is currently prototyping low-latency and high-precision positioning systems for legacy LTE and future 5G New Radio (NR). Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) is a key enabler for seamless wireless interaction between machines in time-critical applications.

At the Mobile World Congress 2018 Fraunhofer will show a low-latency demo for a visual inspection use case. The transmission system, which triggers the inspection cameras, is realized twofold: via a low-latency connection using the new LTE technology with shortened Transmission Time Intervals (LTE sTTI) and via a standard Wi-Fi connection for direct comparison. Visitors will experience a visual inspection scenario in a production process and the benefits of LTE sTTI for industrial use cases. The technology is able to provide reduced end-to-end latencies and a low variance in latency (jitter).

5G positioning will enhance the prevalent 4G positioning performance by introducing new technologies and features to overcome current limitations. This includes measures such as utilizing larger bandwidth to improve time resolution, taking advantage of dense deployments and introducing new advanced processing techniques.