It could be corn cobs rather than carrots that have the best prospects – thanks to the abundance of lignin and cellulose found in the crop – to improve night vision. Researchers in China have used the materials to produce near-infrared (NIR) transparent optical filters for advanced imaging applications that highlight nature’s growing appeal to device makers.

“Lignocellulose-based bio-sourced materials are abundant, renewable, nontoxic, and mechanically strong candidates for optical materials,” explains the team in a paper published recently in Research – a Science Partner Journal.

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NIR filters are crucial to the success of night vision cameras, as we shall soon discuss, and designs are typically made using two approaches. One option requires expensive glass materials that – while effective – can involve complicated fabrication steps. Alternatively, developers can use ultraviolet-visible absorbing dyes, which are easier to work with.

However, neither option has the environmental or economic appeal of using waste corn cobs. Plus, the performance – based on prototypes tested by the group – could be superior to conventional night vision components.

Why night vision cameras use NIR filters

To be effective, night vision cameras need to maximize the available light, which – once the sun has gone down, or is blocked indoors – is to be found in the NIR portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. NIR filters isolate this usable illumination band, while preventing interference from other wavelengths.

Without an NIR filter, night vision cameras would be easy to blind using a torch or a smartphone flash. Imaging systems would be similarly affected by other artificial light sources such as vehicle headlamps.

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Regular digital cameras have an NIR blocking filter that stops photos and video from appearing washed out and makes sure that images match the optical response of the human eye.

As an aside, removing the NIR blocking filter from a digital camera can allow users to peer inside electronic devices that otherwise appear to be opaque – for example, if the case material is transparent to NIR light. Vein viewer technology uses near-infrared light to visualize major blood vessels beneath the skin, which also exploits the sensitivity of commercial imaging sensors outside the visible spectrum.

Eye-tracking in the near-infrared

Night vision style cameras are particularly well-suited to eye-tracking, as the NIR images provide strong contrast for algorithms to respond to. And there are a number of applications that exploit this opportunity. For example, several chip designers such as Qualcomm and Analog Devices have offerings that focus on driver and occupant monitoring for automotive applications.

Eye-tracking solutions, which operate at NIR wavelengths, can determine where the driver is looking at any moment in time to ensure that attention is being paid to the road ahead. Systems can also spot if the driver appears sleepy or is using a cell phone while the vehicle is in motion, and issue a safety warning.

Also, eye-tracking persists even if occupants are wearing sunglasses, as regular lenses are designed to block harmful ultraviolet rays and are transparent to NIR light. However, it’s possible to purchase privacy-focused spectacles, such as products sold by Reflectacles, which are fitted with an IR blocker.

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In this case, the wearer’s eyes will remain obscured to 3D infrared facial mapping software and 2D facial recognition systems that use infrared light as their illumination source.

Returning to the researchers’ corn cob-derived NIR filter, the combination of cellulose and lignin appears to produce a high-performance and practical film.

“The captured lignin was fused to fill the gaps in a cellulose network, which then held the fibers tightly and created a homogeneous dense structure,” comments the group. “Both the lignin and the dense structure provided the biofilter with unique optical properties, including strong UV-vis light blocking (~100% at 400 nm and 57.58% to 98.59% at 550 nm), low haze (close to 0%), and high NIR transmittance (~90%).”

The post Corn cobs have night vision prospects appeared first on TechHQ.

• Low prices on solar panels are set to continue.
• Subsidies on fossil fuels make renewables more expensive.
• Invest now before green taxes land in the EU and elsewehere.

Stockpiles of solar panels in the US and EU have grown sharply, with capacity held nearly twice that of expected demand for the panels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has reported.

The oversupply has caused a price cut, reducing wholesale rates by nearly half. The IEA says that the mismatch between manufacturing and sales will continue until 2028. Rather than further price drops, the agency predicts that manufacturers will “focus on cost-cutting and innovation,” edging out smaller manufacturers that cannot compete due to their smaller economies of scale.

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For businesses looking to decrease their carbon footprint, using solar energy sources can offer tax incentives, a more sustainable investment profile, and highly marketable CSR wins.

Solar panels to reduce fossil fuel reliance

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU is aiming for a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases across the continent by 55%, and to become entirely carbon-neutral by 2050. The Green Deal will likely be backed by so-called green taxation, penalizing high-emissions organizations. The EU also plans to use subsidies, what it describes as ‘pricing instruments,’ and public infrastructure investment to achieve its goals of a more sustainable Europe-wide economy.

“Northeast Solar Energy Research Center” by Brookhaven National Laboratory is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Currently, many countries, including most member states, subsidize fossil fuel consumption, a legacy policy intended to promote production and economic growth. The Energy Taxation Directive, last updated in 2003, does not link CO2 emissions to tax rates applied to energy sources.

Furthermore, the ETD exempts aviation and maritime fuel from tax, a mandate clearly out of sync with the European Green Deal. Significant legislative and fiscal changes are clearly afoot.

Joe Biden’s agenda in 2021 proposed removing or reducing the tax breaks on domestic fossil fuels, which account for around $20bn per year of effective subsidy, most of which goes to oil and gas producers. Across the EU, 55 billion Euros annually were similarly granted as of 2019.

So the current oversupply of solar panels offers a prime opportunity for organizations to invest in green energy, with market prices due to stay low for the next four years – at least, according to the International Energy Agency. The higher cost at the point of consumption of renewable energy is due to electricity suppliers passing on the extra costs associated with its storage and distribution, according to The Economist. In a market for electricity, suppliers competing on price will favor the lower cost of fossil fuels.

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Meanwhile, the capacity for solar power generation will remain underutilized, with the manufacturing pipeline set to produce panels capable of 1,300GW output by 2028, the IEA stated. That figure assumes no particular changes in technology to develop more efficient panels.

While the climate crisis remains a bogey-man many choose to ignore, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicted in 2021 that the planet would warm by 1.5 degrees Centigrade by 2040. By 2100, according to research by University College, London, the economic cost of climate change will be between 37 and 51% of world GDP.

The choices made by individuals, governments, organizations and business have created a situation that will have massive impact on quality of life of the next generation. By the same means, individual decisions made this year can alter this outcome. Investing in solar energy now, when market conditions are attractive to even the most short-term thinking, is an unmissable opportunity.

The post Solar panel prices dip due to oversupply appeared first on TechHQ.

If you hit YouTube searching for the truth on Bitcoin and whether the cryptocurrency is harmful to the environment, the results paint a confusing picture. In the play queue, you’ll find no shortage of videos on the theme, which sounds like a good thing – until you look at the titles. First up, we have ‘Why BitCoin is so bad for the planet’ followed straight afterward by ‘Myth: Bitcoin is bad for the Environment’. And the list goes on, bit flipping between whether the world’s most famous cryptocurrency is going to save or kill us all.

Flooding the internet most recently were concerns not just about the energy consumption arising from the use of Bitcoin, but how much water is used to cool all of those hot-running miners (the computers used to validate additions to the blockchain). The trigger for the debate was a paper published in Cell Reports Sustainability, ‘Bitcoin’s growing water footprint’, which reported that a single Bitcoin transaction today could cost as much water as a backyard swimming pool.

A single #Bitcoin transaction today could cost as much water as a backyard swimming pool.

Read more in "Bitcoin's growing water footprint" now published in @CellRepSustain:
https://t.co/DwoFU6QmAz

Alex de Vries @Digiconomist pic.twitter.com/zRZuOm7A7n

— Cell Press (@CellPressNews) December 1, 2023

Naturally, cryptocurrency advocates were quick to debunk those claims, which doesn’t help anyone searching for the truth on Bitcoin and looking for a consensus on whether the cryptocurrency is harmful to the environment. So, how do we get to an answer?

Getting to the answer

At the heart of the issue is the amount of energy used by Bitcoin miners to validate additions to the blockchain. And, as a reminder, computers that are successful in completing this challenge (which involves finding leading zeros on a hash of the digital ledger) are rewarded with, currently, 6.25 Bitcoin.

However, baked into the protocol is a halving schedule that periodically drops that reward by 50%. Back in 2009, successful Bitcoin miners received 50 Bitcoin for their efforts, and three so-called halvings have taken place since then, with a fourth expected in the first half of this year. And this has a bearing on anyone searching for the truth on Bitcoin and whether the cryptocurrency is harmful to the environment.

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Despite the disagreement between analysts online, there are still useful energy consumption figures to be found, which help to frame the problem. To find an answer, we need to know – at the very least – how much electricity a typical miner consumes. And one way to do that is to look at the stats for BITMAIN’s popular S19 model, which – depending on whether it’s air or liquid-cooled (no more noisy fans) – consumes between 3 and 5 kW at the wall.

Running just one of these machines (and large-scale Bitcoin farms could have thousands of them) 24 hours a day corresponds to 72 kWh of energy, at the low end of the scale. To put this in perspective, this is already more than double the energy consumption of an average US household. And Bitcoin enthusiasts have calculated that you’d need 14 solar panels (or more, if the weather is less favorable) to power such cryptocurrency mining equipment.

Miners looking to profit from their activities, rather than simply hoard Bitcoin, will have a keen interest in the price of electricity – and the cheaper, the better. Without a supply of cheap electricity, the economics of Bitcoin mining are not favorable – and that’s before the expected halving of rewards. Hence, miners will seek out areas with readily available, low-cost power such as hydroelectric sources.

High fossil fuel prices that push up electricity prices will mean that miners run at a loss. Searching for the truth on Bitcoin and whether the cryptocurrency is harmful to the environment then becomes a question of how long operators can sustain those losses. When clean energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuel-generated power, you can bet that miners will want to tap into that. Plus, profits could be dented in other ways.

Cryptocarbon

Organizations such as the International Monetary Fund are considering a corrective tax to address the issue of what they dub ‘cryptocarbon’. Their concern is based on a scenario where the value of Bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies based around a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, rises significantly and brings about the use of large amounts of low-energy efficiency mining hardware.

Bitcoin mining has become a search for cheap energy – which includes sources of natural gas that have to be vented into the atmosphere for safety, but can be repurposed to power blockchain validation. According to operators, there are environmental savings that can be engineered by exploiting what’s termed ‘stranded energy’.

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Some Bitcoin farms have struck agreements with energy suppliers to shut down when there’s peak demand for electricity and power is required for more critical uses. Conversely, mining hardware can help to balance electricity grids that find themselves flooded with clean energy – for example, on sunny days, in the case of solar arrays, and on gusty ones, where power comes from wind turbines.

Operators of Bitcoin farms are keen to point out that their infrastructure is interruptible and can benefit energy firms as a buyer of last resort. In the middle of the night when there’s little demand, Bitcoin farms can purchase excess power that would otherwise be rejected at a loss to energy companies.

To be clear, cryptocurrencies that pitch millions of mining machines against each other to collect a single prize do waste energy in the name of securing the network. But it may not be the apocalypse that some suggest, as long as cheap clean energy can be found and market forces deter miners from hooking up their operations to generators fed with fossil fuels.

The post Searching for the truth on Bitcoin and swimming pools appeared first on TechHQ.

• Autonomous vehicles are transforming supply chains in a number of ways.
• They also have potential to maximize urban car parking space and valet parking.
• While these may not be Blade Runner applications of autonomy, they can have a huge impact.

Leading self-driving car developers may be facing roadblocks in ramping up their urban operations, but vehicle automation is racing ahead in other settings. For example, cost-effective and eco-friendly tow robots are helping to transform supply chains through improved yard transport operations.

Having trialed the supply chain tech with DHL France in 2023, Unmanned-Transport-as-a-Service provider ex9 – a startup based in Évry, a short drive south of Paris – is making its fleet of autonomous electric shunting robots available globally.

Tow robots – transforming supply chains

The firm’s tow robots, designed to alleviate congestion and delays at logistics hubs, slide under road transport trailers to replace human-driven cabs.

In 2023, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) forecast that driver shortages could double in five years. “An aging population – particularly in Europe and the United States where less than 13% of workers are under 25 – partially explains driver shortages, suggesting that the available pool of national workers may not be enough to cover the gap,” writes the IRU.

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Tow robots can automate the common tasks of shunting operators and drivers thanks to a software stack tailored for industrial use and logistics maneuvers. Perception, localization, dynamic control, and path routing are supported by a sensor kit fitted to the autonomous robot tractors.

Ex9 claims that automation can increase the rate of pre-loading and so-called “drop & hook” shunting operations, while reducing costs and lowering the risk of accidents. What’s more, being battery-powered, the self-driving freight technology helps to drive down the emission of diesel fumes at the depot – both by shuttling trailers back and forth using electric power and by cutting waiting times, reducing the amount of diesel engine idling by incoming and outgoing trucks.

Trendsetting container transport

Tow robots for streamlining road freight operations are another check in transforming supply chains. Progress happening elsewhere includes fully automated port operations – such as the Port of Long Beach, US – where autonomous vehicles can be seen shuttling containers on the harbourside.

Sea freight is critical to reducing supply chain emissions, with some shipping operators investigating the use of hi-tech sails. Vessels can be in and out of the harbor in as little as 48 hours, which is a major triumph of terminal operating systems. Unloaded containers from a single cargo ship could stretch as far as 70 miles if placed end-to-end.

Using Automated Rail Mounted Gantry cranes, @PatrickTerminal – Sydney Autostrad achieved a global-first full automation of container transport between yard and rail wagon. Powered by our drives and #automation tech, the cranes increase efficiency, sustainability, and safety! pic.twitter.com/nKWwMeW8fa

— Siemens Aus & NZ (@Siemens_Aus) October 5, 2023

So far, so good, but what about bad weather? Supply chain delays can propagate quickly, and self-driving systems need to be resilient. What happens to wheel-based odometry when tyres slip in damp conditions? A coastal climate of heavy rain, fog, and sea spray could obscure camera images. Fortunately, there’s no need to panic – at least if you’re using radar-based localization systems, which have no such limitations in keeping autonomous vehicles on the right path.

Besides container-carrying self-driving vehicles, other port machinery, such as rubber-tyred gantry cranes and ship-to-shore lifting equipment, can also benefit from the 360-degree all-weather sensors. Navtech – a developer and manufacturer of industrial-grade radar – boasts that sensors operate reliably in rain, fog, dust, dirt, and in all light conditions, including complete darkness.

Use cases beyond transforming supply chains

On TechHQ we’ve written about how other advances – such as quantum computing – can be brought into play, further transforming supply chains. And being able to stack and retrieve large items efficiently has applications beyond optimizing container shipping and improving throughput at logistics hubs.

A growing application for self-driving vehicle robots is automated parking for cars and even bicycles. Parking space is tight in many cities across the globe, and stacking vehicles vertically is attracting interest from industrial automation experts such as Japanese firm GIKEN (see YouTube clip).

In fact, there are a number of providers worldwide working on automated vehicle parking projects, including Stanley Robotics, which has shown how airport parking can be transformed. In this case, a low-riding robotic platform slips under the vehicle and gently raises the car or light truck by an inch or so, using anchors alongside each wheel.

Robots can pack vehicles much more tightly than human drivers to maximize available parking space. They also simplify what can be a dull and repetitive task for human drivers – which is where automation really comes into its own. Valet parking at hotels is another related use case.

Stanley Robotics claims that self-driving parking robots can increase parking capacity by 50%. They also remove a pain point for customers and make parking, in the firm’s words, hassle-free.

Robo-parking – saving space, reducing risk.

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A key component in all of these autonomous vehicle success stories is that the self-driving element is something that combines with a regular vehicle to perform a well-described and predictable task. In the case of tow robots, it’s shunting a trailer to and from its yard slot. And for parking systems, it’s storing and fetching vehicles.

Also, in all the scenarios we’ve discussed, the environment is well-controlled. Port access is restricted, and likewise for logistics hubs and robot-operated parking facilities. Self-driving algorithms can be better protected from surprises than they can, for example, on the open road or in unpredictable urban settings. There are security gains too – tightly packed vehicles are not easy for thieves to get into and drive away (setting aside cybersecurity threats).

People may be disappointed not to find self-driving taxis whizzing effortlessly around their city. But that’s not to say that autonomous vehicles aren’t making an impact.

Parking promises to be more available and less tedious for drivers. And in deployments that may be less visible to consumers, autonomous vehicles are transforming supply chains.

The post Transforming supply chains: an autonomous vehicle success story appeared first on TechHQ.

It’s said that elite racing drivers can feel the road through their bodies. Pressed into their seat, hands on the wheel, they are able to detect fine details of the track below and set the steering and speed to match the surface conditions. However, it takes talent, years of experience, and a race-engineered vehicle to achieve this.

In the meantime, there are over a billion cars on the road. And while some of those motorists may think that they can feel the road like a racing driver, accident rates suggest otherwise. Plus, adding autonomous vehicles to the mix remains a work in progress and raises a number of safety concerns.

Wouldn’t it be good if we could fix all of this? And, according to automotive software firm Tactile Mobility, we can. What’s more, the raw inputs are already there thanks to electronic hardware that’s been part of vehicle designs for years.

“There’s a wealth of data that exists in every vehicle,” Yagil Tzur – VP of Product at Tactile Mobility – told TechHQ. “Every car has a CAN network, sensors, and electronic control units (ECUs).”

Model calibration: sample vehicles are driven on a proving ground to dial-in the analytic capabilities of the automotive software.

To turn those inputs into insights, the firm uses machine learning to create what is, in effect, a virtual sensor stack capable of deciphering grip levels, steering health, and other valuable vehicle performance characteristics.

The process begins by taking cars to a proving ground where they can be driven on a wide range of road conditions at different tyre pressures and set up to mimic different numbers of passengers, for example.

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Model calibration then weights the observed behaviour against readings that are available on the CAN bus such as wheel speed, engine torque, yaw rate, and many other signals.

When complete, the automotive software can estimate the wheel grip and provide real time updates on tyre wear – all without having to fit any additional hardware. And having a virtual sensor stack designed to feel the road has got car manufacturers and suppliers interested.

Investors in Tactile Mobility include Porsche Ventures and Goodyear Ventures, which both came on board in 2021 as part of a USD $27 million series C funding round.

Why EVs are tough on tyres

Governments around the world are incentivising drivers to purchase battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs). And while that will improve air quality on city streets, it makes life a whole lot tougher for the rubber that connects cars to the road – due to the increased weight and high torque of EVs.

Tyre performance is critical to vehicle safety, and the importance of those four contact patches is often overlooked by regular drivers – so much so that the US Department of Transportation mandated that automobiles be fitted with tyre pressure monitoring systems (TPMS), as part of the TREAD act, in the early 2000s.

Similar legislation was introduced in other countries, and today all cars have TPMS sensors. However, those systems by no means feel the road. Instead, they simply trigger a warning light to indicate low tyre pressure once the value passes a crude threshold.

Virtual sensors provide a much more granular view of tyre performance, giving drivers not just a warning that something is wrong, but adjusting lifetime estimates so that failures don’t happen in the first place and timely replacements can be made.

Tzur sums up the gains of having Tactile Mobility data as being like TPMS on steroids. What’s more, having real world information on tap could help tyre companies further improve their designs – for example, to cater for the specific demands of EVs.

Tyre developers already spend big sums on research and development, but feedback from virtual sensors that feel the road could enrich the amount of information that designers have to work with.

“99% of testing is performed on brand new tyres,” Tzur points out. “Companies have less information on the performance of mid-worn tyres.”

Wisdom of the cloud

There are two sides to Tactile Mobility’s business. First is the onboard virtual sensing, which presents its data to other ECUs on the CAN bus and helps to finesse advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) such as cruise control. But there are also cloud-based solutions enabled by the feel-the-road technology.

For example, as the install base increases (Tactile Mobility is working with various automotive OEMs in the US and Europe – and has publicly mentioned Ford Motor Company as a partner; Porsche is also listed on its website), some very interesting crowd-sourcing opportunities arise.

The setup is well-suited to characterising the quality of the road surface and sharing this information with local authorities – to schedule maintenance and fill potholes – as well as other interested parties, such as insurance firms.

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It’s possible to use the technology to generate a road friction map, which could advise on speed adjustments to reduce the chance of accidents. Potentially, insurance premiums could take into account the quality of the road surface and data would help accident investigations.

Also, should a vehicle experience a driving incident, that information could be shared to warn nearby motorists. “If there’s an adverse event, the data can be sent to the cloud at high priority to communicate with other vehicles,” said Tzur.

Once vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications become more commonplace, the adverse event alerting process could even happen directly to give drivers (and autonomous vehicles) additional reaction time.

Tactile Mobility has its origins in fleet management, where a forerunner of its systems helped to guide road transport operators on fuel management. And performance coaching feedback could also cross over into its feel-the-road virtual sensing stack – for example, to help drivers prolong tyre life on their vehicles.

Navigating self-driving roadblocks

It’s possible too that self-driving cars, which are having a bunch of bad press lately, may also benefit from better road surface data enabled using machine learning methods such as those deployed by Tactile Mobility.

For example, autonomous vehicles can be spoofed by lines painted on the road, but virtual sensors capable of feeling the road ahead may be able to better distinguish between legitimate markings and rogue ones.

The post Feel the road: virtual sensor stack gains traction appeared first on TechHQ.

• The business benefits of 5G go beyond standard smartphone speed.
• Private 5G networks in particular advantages for app or use case testing.
• 5G could yet bring significant business benefits to the transport and logistics sector.

With some commentators voicing concerns about whether 5G has lived up to expectations, it’s worth looking at what the fifth generation of cellular network technology is – and what it and isn’t. A good way of getting to the heart of that capability is to focus on what 5G can do for enterprise customers and business users.

5G was badged as being superfast, and this may have added to the confusion. For example, smartphone users may not notice a great deal of difference in device performance, regardless of whether they are connected to 4G or 5G.

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However, there are still reasons to celebrate from an infrastructure perspective. As we’ve mentioned on TechHQ, upgrading base stations to the latest 5G technology not only means that equipment is smaller and lighter – there can be significant energy savings too. And the advantages don’t stop there.

“The integration of AI and 5G in modern switchgear marks a significant leap in the electrical infrastructure management,” comments Kiran Raj, practice head of disruptive tech at GlobalData. “Not only does this tech convergence boost operational efficiency, but it also enhances safety by predicting and mitigating electrical failures before they happen.”

Operators in China have shown how miniature cameras inside switch cabinets can be used to detect fire and activate extinguishers. And predictive analytics can be trained using data from power transformers.

Understanding 5G business benefits

Given the link between 5G and telecoms, it’s natural to look to smartphone performance for signs that the next generation of cellular network technology is living up to the hype. But the bigger picture for 5G goes well beyond handsets.

In its recent report, 5G Building a Digital Society, Vodafone explains how 5G can improve daily life more broadly and shares examples that business and enterprise users may not have considered.

For example, Vodafone says that 5G-enabled sensors on rail networks have the potential to improve services by raising track maintenance efficiency by up to 40% and reducing the rate of fault incidence by 20%. 5G-enabled rail could also help to add capacity to the network, lowering overcrowding at peak times.

Coupling trains virtually using 5G would enable them to share braking and acceleration data. A white paper by Thales calculates that train separation distance could be reduced by 43% compared with using current railway signaling methods, based on analysis of the UK South West Main Line (a 230 km route linking central London and the coastal town of Weymouth). In principle, this would allow many more trains to run without having to build additional tracks.

Low-latency private 5G networks are being used to automate vehicles driving between parts warehouses and main manufacturing sites.

Transportation and logistics could be big winners as 5G networks become more widespread. Vehicle telematics systems have long used cellular communications to connect to the cloud and monitor that all’s well through remote analytics.

Vendors can deliver software updates over-the-air rather than having to instruct owners to contact their dealership. And 5G telematics adds to those capabilities.

Vehicles can connect to each other to see around corners and gain greater knowledge about the road ahead. Automotive technology firm Harman, which is owned by Samsung, describes 5G as the missing piece of the puzzle for highly automated vehicles.

The low latency response time (of around 1 millisecond) that’s possible over 5G – a reduction of ten times compared with 4G – means that humans can remotely control cars, trucks, and other vehicles, with reaction times that are similar to having a driver sitting inside, directly behind the wheel.

Industry 4.0 is changing the business landscape right before our eyes, thanks to #5G and the innovations that come from it . Learn how to stay at the forefront of what’s coming. #5GHQ https://t.co/rghLt3TEG2 pic.twitter.com/EIZ8oIq48B

— David Yelvington (@DavidYelvington) December 11, 2023

5G also supports a much higher connection density than 4G, which benefits smart city infrastructure and brings us arguably one of the most appealing configurations for business and enterprise users – private 5G networks.

Private 5G networks give firms data coverage inside and outside facilities while keeping communications secure. The high connection density and low latency capabilities mentioned above suit mobile robots and so-called ‘intralogistics’ – the movement of goods within a warehouse, distribution center, or production facility.

Kollmorgen, a specialist in the fleet control of automated guided vehicles and mobile robots, has demonstrated (in tests with its partner Ericsson) that platforms are as stable on private 5G networks as on Wi-Fi.

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Antenna handovers are seamless, and 5G enables localization in dynamic environments without having to use artificial landmarks, according to the team.

Support for time-sensitive networking (TSN) allows fixed Ethernet and 5G networks to operate in harmony with each other. What’s more, TSN means that 5G can support applications normally carried over wired Ethernet, potentially saving on long cable runs at large sites.

Looking at industrial operating environments for 5G, business cases include airports, manufacturing sites, ports, mining facilities, and offshore locations.

How to build a private 5G network

Business and enterprise users interested in deploying their own cellular services have the option of using a private 5G network starter kit. The approach is ideal for testing applications on a pilot scale and gaining experience before making larger investments in the technology.

Private 5G starter kits for business:

• 5G Ready – X4000 Private 5G (XP5G) Solution
• Airspan Private 5G Network in a box
• Athonet starter kit for 5G-SA
• CampusGenius 5G StarterKit
• Flo Networks Private 5G Starter Kit
• Tech Mahindra Private 5G Wireless Network suite on Azure

It’s clear that companies have much to gain from the technology, but other organizations may also wish to take a look at what 5G installations can do for them.

The Liverpool 5G Testbed, which created the largest 5G mmWave mesh network in the UK and second largest in the world, showed how a private 5G network could benefit health and social care services.

Features included a 4k video link to help patients check that they were taking their medicines correctly, which resulted in fewer GP visits and trips to hospital.

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According to the study, there was a 50% reduction in people taking the wrong medication or receiving an incorrect dosage. Medication adherence levels were as high as 95% compared with a national average of 55%.

Returning to the topic of saving energy, testing of smart streetlights in Oslo – featuring 5G-enabled sensors – demonstrated a 45% reduction in electricity consumption. In dense urban areas, savings could reach 60% – based on a 12,000 light installation deployed in the City of London, which overhauled 30-year-old lighting stock.

Smart city lighting allows control down to the level of specific streets and buildings and enables the illumination to be dimmed as well as turned on and off.

With timely investment, the rewards of 5G to businesses and society can extend way beyond the smartphone.

The post Defining 5G in terms of business and enterprise use cases appeared first on TechHQ.

Main street retailers, high street shops, local traders, and out-of-town malls – wherever you look, brick-and-mortar stores face competition from businesses serving customers online. Plus, internet shopping experiences get better every day as online firms use clicks and page views to improve their digital storefronts. And those e-commerce sites are only a swipe away if you have a smartphone, which a huge number of shoppers do.

Technology can help in physical retail environments too. Touch screens are becoming more commonplace in brick-and-mortar stores – for example, with the rise of self-serve kiosks. And on TechHQ, we’ve written about how self-powered Bluetooth product labels improve supply chain visibility and enable real-time carbon-emissions tracking.

But asking brick-and-mortar stores to pay for extra technology when sales are down and budgets are tight, isn’t likely to go down well. Also, online stores may have cyber-attacks to contend with, but they are much more resilient against a growing problem for retailers – shoplifting.

Politely known as ‘shrinkage’ in the retail industry, brick-and-mortar stores are reporting high losses from theft. There are multiple triggers for the rise in the amount of goods being stolen from physical stores – inflation and higher food prices are a couple of the concerns being voiced. And owners of brick-and-mortar stores are certainly not alone in wanting to hear some good news.

Retail analytics for brick-and-mortar stores

Fortunately, online stores don’t have a monopoly on being able to profit from retail data, and taking a methodical look at what’s in real-world shopping baskets turns out to be incredibly enlightening. Retail analytics can shine a light on who’s visiting different locations and when.

For example, it’s possible to create customer personas based on the contents of a shopping basket and back-calculate whether stores should be catering to professionals, families, or both. “By understanding how customers shop, we can advise grocers on what to display,” Sam Vise – CEO of Optimum Retailing – told TechHQ.

Vise got into the retail analytics business helping technology firms such as Sky navigate the move into physical stores, advising clients on how big the sales area should be and what fixtures to include and where. To do that, he and his team had to upload detailed floor plans, and the process was a springboard to offering what the North American firm dubs an in-store experience management solution.

VR opportunities on the agenda.

According to Optimum Retailing, the analytics tool – which connects with a variety of third-party platforms such as Oracle, SAP, Hubspot, and Salesforce services – can increase topline revenue for brick-and-mortar brands by double digits within 12-18 months.

The approach makes use of planograms, which help retailers optimize their fixture space by highlighting what goods should go where on the shelves. But there’s more that can be presented in the format than just documenting product locations. “We know where products are in the store, and look at every purchase that takes place,” said Vise.

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Linking planograms with shopping basket data gathered at the checkout, quickly shows how those fixtures and product layouts are performing. Vise describes the results as a heat map that makes it easy to see which items are underselling (in other words, locking up shelf space) and overselling – a missed sales opportunity and a negative experience for shoppers.

Returning to the persona examples of professionals shopping Mondays to Fridays and families stocking up at the weekend, brick-and-mortar stores can make sure that they display larger pack sizes on Saturdays and Sundays. Smart planograms convey all this information to retailers, helping them maximize the performance of shelf space.

Firms such as Optimum Retailing can help brick-and-mortar stores improve their operations in a number of ways. As mentioned, the first is by guiding retailers on what to put where and in the right quantity – instructions that adapt to match different shopping behavior at different times.

The technology can also be used to manage shelf life, by only bringing perishable items out of bulk cold storage when the data shows that goods have the strongest sales window. Food waste is a big problem and having systems that help grocery stores utilize products at the optimum time can help curb those losses, bringing financial and environmental savings.

In some cases, the numbers may even show that it’s possible for operators to profit from a store that’s 50% smaller, with a reduced footprint lowering energy consumption and enabling retailers to be more efficient.

Planograms can indicate inventory that’s particularly vulnerable to shrinkage and gives store owners the opportunity to relocate items to locations that are easier to monitor or protect. Generative AI makes it easy for clients to quiz their data using natural language prompts rather than needing the knowledge of a data scientist to query the various features to draw out trends.

Looking ahead, Vise sees stores becoming much more customized to their locations, better representing the needs of local shoppers. “The level of personalization will increase,” he comments.

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Brick-and-mortar premises have the opportunity to bring online shoppers in-store. Click-and-collect schemes are proving attractive for workers who have returned to the office and are no longer at home to receive their online orders.

And once shoppers walk through the door, who knows what extra items they will buy. “30% of a store’s revenue can be from products that customers weren’t there to shop for,” said Vise.

A long snaking path towards the cash desk can be a gold mine for brick-and-mortar stores with the right products on display. And in-store experience management solutions can help retailers with that.

Smart city tech

Lastly, it’s worth touching on the rise of smart city tech and the insights that it can bring to firms. As well as having in-store information, retailers can tap into a variety of other data feeds such as local weather and footfall – to give just a couple of examples. The urban observatory developed by Newcastle University in the UK shows how smart city technology could feed into the retail environment.

The challenge for brick-and-mortar stores on how to compete with e-commerce is a significant one. But just as online retailers have thrived by using data, it’s possible for physical stores to use digital tools to up their game. And this includes virtual reality headsets.

Speaking with TechHQ, Vise is upbeat about developments in VR technology. “We can do A-B testing,” he comments – noting the possibilities of recreating layouts in VR and then observing how shoppers navigate different retail environments and product fixture designs.

Surviving the age of internet shopping has been tough for brick-and-mortar stores. But hopefully, the coming digital future will be better for physical retail and bring people back to city shops.

The post Brick-and-mortar stores stock up on retail operations software appeared first on TechHQ.

Governments and automakers are on a mission to encourage drivers to buy battery-powered vehicles. And while electric powertrains will make city streets sweeter on the lungs, simply replacing fossil-fuelled petrol and diesel engines with batteries and motors will do nothing for traffic congestion on the road. In fact, autonomous vehicle (AV) designs may even make journey times worse – based on a study published this month in the journal Transportation Research Record and available as a preprint on arXiv.

So, should car buyers avoid advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) upgrades on their next vehicle order? It depends. AV models, and the features that step toward fully driverless cars, have dual benefits – improved safety for road users and more efficient journeys.

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On the first count, vehicles bristling with a variety of automotive sensors – such as cameras found on Tesla’s popular EVs and automotive lidar and radar configurations adopted by other OEMs – can lookout for approaching incidents that human drivers may have missed.

Even relatively low-tech ultrasonic parking sensors, which have a short range and are most effective at low speeds, have nonetheless proven to be useful in preventing countless dents and collisions with pedestrians.

All things considered, it’s reasonable to view increased automation and sensor fusion that stacks multiple data feeds as a boon for safety. For example, automotive radar can bounce underneath the car in front to see obstacles that would be blocked from a human driver’s view.

How to avoid an AV jam

But answering the question of whether higher levels of ADAS leading to full AV operation will improve journey times requires additional information. And that detail turns out to be connectivity – as the researchers in the study, which focused on saturation headway and capacity at signalized intersections, discovered.

When vehicles and traffic control systems are connected, more road traffic can pass through junctions. So-called signal phase and timing (SPaT) data broadcast from traffic lights at intersections gives both human-driven vehicles and AV types the opportunity to adjust their speed to maximize road capacity.

Only one month to go until we hold our first consultation workshop on the #economic & #environmental benefits of Self-Driving Vehicles!

We’re looking forward to hearing from MPs & industry voices in the AV and AI sectors.
Register your interest belowhttps://t.co/zLKksP11UY

— Self-Driving Vehicles APPG (@SelfDrivingAPPG) August 18, 2023

But in the absence of these broadcasts and without supporting vehicle connectivity, even AVs with full self-driving capabilities will fall short of their mobility promises. “This is because those AVs are programmed to drive conservatively in order to reduce the risk of collisions,” explains Ali Hajbabaie of North Carolina State University, who took part in the study looking at the traffic dynamics of having different portions of connected, automated, and connected automated vehicles at a computer-simulated intersection.

“There is a lot of research showing that automated vehicles can improve safety. But our research here – which relies on computational modeling – suggests that if we want to also improve travel time, an increase in automated vehicles isn’t enough,” he adds. “We need vehicles that are capable of communicating with each other and with the traffic-control systems that manage traffic flow at intersections.”

The finding has implications for city planners hoping to improve mobility around town by giving AV operators the go-ahead to provide self-driving taxi services. This month, Waymo – which was established under Alphabet and can be traced back to Google’s self-driving car trials beginning in 2009 – received its driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

And the vote of confidence from the CPUC paves the way for Waymo to now offer a paid, fully autonomous ride-hailing service in San Francisco, US. But without smart city infrastructure, some of those AV benefits could be left on the table if developers find themselves having to dial down performance to give human road users more reaction time to changes in the driving environment.

However, information sharing between vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and road infrastructure (V2I) could reduce the size of the time buffer that needs to be programmed into mobility algorithms. And, in principle, AVs could drive much closer to their potential limits with direction changes being telegraphed to surrounding road traffic to help the decision-making of connected vehicles following.

Other studies have shown how connected traffic lights can smooth the flow of vehicles through city roads. But what makes this study different is the investigation of how a mix of connected and unconnected road users impacts journey times and lane use efficiency.

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The worst-case scenario, based on the group’s results, is a stream of 100% AV traffic with 0% information sharing, which reduces lane capacity by 20%. And the result highlights the productivity risk of having AVs circulating on city streets without smart city connectivity.

Certainly, urban planners who are struggling to convince budget holders of the need for greater V2I connectivity can use the data to support their case. And on TechHQ we’ve written about how smart traffic lights are improving journey times on public transport, as buses can be prioritized to help services stick to their timetables.

Developing vehicle autonomy hand in hand with smart transport infrastructure is a winning strategy and plays into the performance gains of technology such as 5G that supports low-latency, fast-acting communications.

Automation-ready transport planning

From May 2017 to April 2020, a European project dubbed CoEXist examined what’s needed for cities to prepare for increasing numbers of AVs driving alongside conventional vehicles. And this included understanding the differences between how human drivers and AVs approach unsignalled infrastructure such as roundabouts.

The cities chosen for CoEXist pilots were Milton Keynes in the UK, Stuttgart in Germany, Gothenburg in Sweden, and Helmond in the Netherlands. And the talking points raised are informative. For example, given the number of shared spaces in cities, how can operators prevent the passive nature of CAVs from causing delays as they are obliged to give way to pedestrians? And what’s the best way of integrating ride-sharing CAVs into public transport systems?

AV designs causing city streets to grind to a halt is definitely not part of the industry picture, but AV jams could become a real problem if the connectivity of other road users and infrastructure can’t keep up with the pace of self-driving progress.

The post Smart city connectivity essential to avoid AV jam appeared first on TechHQ.

Trains in China have been transformed in recent years as the country has embraced high-speed rail and expanded its network to more than 40,000 km of tracks. The country has more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined, but the breakthroughs don’t stop there. A study published in the launch issue of the journal High-Speed Railway shows how satellite-based train state perception – for example, using China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) could revolutionize railway signaling.

How does train signaling work?

To understand the benefits of using satellite navigation methods to keep track of trains, it’s useful to consider how railway signaling works today. The governing principle of railway signaling is that no two trains should occupy the same portion of the track. And there are two approaches to managing train movements – fixed block and moving block signaling.

In both cases, the block length (the portion of track reserved for each train) is defined by the stopping distance of the fastest service using that line. And keep in mind that trains in China can take kilometers to come to a standstill when traveling at high speeds.

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Fixed block signaling systems only allow trains to proceed when the next block has become vacant, whereas moving block approaches make sure, dynamically, that there’s sufficient space ahead and behind to accommodate the braking of all units on the line.

Today, the amount of trackside equipment has grown to provide not just signaling data, but also includes systems to monitor train integrity – in other words, whether the front and the back are still attached. There’s other kit too, such as railway infrared hot box detectors that can determine whether wheel bearings are overheating and stop trains before mechanical failures occur.

A #Fuxing #bullettrain, with a designed speed of 350 km/h, departed on Tuesday morning from the Southwest Chinese city of #Guiyang, marking the operation of the Guiyang-Libo section of the Guiyang-Nanning High-speed #Railway. @VisitGuiyang https://t.co/XUSMHTOEiH

— Enterprising China (@sinoprise) August 9, 2023

Key to the implementation of today’s railway management systems is the placement of so-called balises (pronounced /ba-leases/ and named after the French word for ‘marker’), which stand proud a couple of inches above the sleeper below. If you’ve traveled on trains in China and elsewhere in the world, you’ll likely have seen the yellow- or orange-colored units in between the rails.

In their simplest state, balises are kind of like contactless payment points for trains. But rather than record transactions, these track-located transponders – which are powered by looms underneath the locomotive – provide information to the train on its whereabouts and details on the upcoming section of track.

Train transponders: Balises standing proud on a section of track in Europe.

For example, while the train keeps track of its location by counting wheel rotations, this calculation can be checked against the ground truth telegraphed by each balise. This is necessary as wheels slip and wear causes a reduction in diameter that would – if left unchecked – underestimate the distance traveled on long journeys.

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In addition, the beacons tell the train its permitted speed limit for that block of track, as well as information on the geometry and gradient of the upcoming section. Also, balises placed in sequence inform the train of its direction of travel.

However, there are cost implications of having to install and maintain infrastructure over thousands of kilometers of tracks. And to reduce the quantity and complexity of the track-side equipment that’s involved in supporting a modern railway, such as trains running in China and on high-speed networks in other countries, operators are considering approaches that are increasingly train-centric.

In their study, the researchers based at Beijing Jiaotong and Wuhan Universities – with expertise in computer and information technology, and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) approaches – consider the idea of so-called virtual balises.

Trains in China

Leveraging satellite positioning data gathered from BDS, which was constructed to provide independence from GPS, trains in China receive balise information based on their location. The advantage, as the Beijing and Wuhan teams point out, is that existing train control system frameworks could remain the same, as the information formats, etc, would be unchanged. But you could reduce the amount of physical trackside infrastructure that’s required.

Satellite positioning data could also be used for train integrity monitoring, to ensure that the front and back of the formation are where you’d expect them to be. And, based on field tests, the teams conclude that satellite systems could be key technologies in raising the capabilities of train-borne navigation.

Also, trains in China are by no means the only modes of transport to jump on this trend. Buses, trams, and trains elsewhere can be seen fitted with rooftop antennas that have active GPS/GNSS capabilities. But what’s striking about the development of intelligent high-speed rail in China is how it’s competing with short-haul flights, and – by all accounts – winning that competition.

And more trains and fewer flights is important to curb carbon dioxide emissions associated with transportation. On TechHQ we’ve written about the steps that aircraft manufacturers and operators will need to take to make aviation more sustainable. And those plans are based on continued growth in demand for flights, but China is showing that high-speed trains can reduce the environmental impact of aviation – at least when routes are competitive with short-haul flights.

High-speed trains in China can carry hundreds of passengers at a time, sometimes even more. The extra-long version of the Fuxing Hao Series Bullet Train can reportedly accommodate 1,283 passengers in 17 cars. And, if the concept of virtual balises takes off, satellite positioning could reduce the cost of operations and add to the appeal of high-speed rail.

The post What does BeiDou satellite study tell us about trains in China? appeared first on TechHQ.

Twelve months ago, Frost & Sullivan made the case for why private 5G networks will be game-changing for some companies. And Troy Morley, an Industry Principal at the business consulting firm, believes that over the next decade private 5G networks will evolve to support the needs of smaller businesses in almost all industries.

What makes a private 5G network the right choice for firms?

Installing a private 5G network addresses a series of pain points that businesses may face. The first is network coverage. Cell towers in public mobile networks are primarily located based on demand – for example, across urban sites with large populations and alongside transport routes.

And this arrangement is fine for companies based in metropolitan areas or near the highway. But what if firms have business interests in remote locations that need to be connected locally and to headquarters? Extreme examples are underground operations such as mining and activities out at sea.

Telecoms trend: 5G antennas being installed on a building in South Korea. Image credit: Ericsson.

It may also be the case that firms near a public mast have great coverage outside, but experience dead spots when trying to use the cell network inside. Morley notes that factories and warehouses can have problems in this area, with buildings and their contents acting as potential sources of signal interference.

Given these network coverage concerns, it’s easy to understand why early adopters of private 5G networks have been operators in mining, energy, and manufacturing industries. There’s also data security to consider, which is another reason for firms to opt for a private setup rather than build solutions using public mobile network infrastructure.

5G performance gains

5G brings faster download speeds and low-latency performance to devices. And high-definition video and mobile gaming are well-advertised as reasons for mobile customers to ditch their old smartphones and buy new 5G handsets. But this is just scratching the surface.

“While most consumers think that 5G is all about them, the truth is 5G is ideal for addressing the networking needs of business and enterprise,” writes Morley.

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For example, 5G brings significant edge capabilities. Private 5G networks don’t just connect staff, they enable industrial IoT communications too. And wireless networks provide flexibility to make businesses more agile and composable – in other words, tools and teams are easier to reconfigure for different projects.

Cellnex’s Catherine Gull lists automation, worker safety, and situational awareness as the top three benefits that private networks can bring to operations. Enterprises can use 5G systems to automate indoors and outdoors, from self-driving vehicles to factory robots.

“They do it to increase safety, and they do it to increase reliability,” she told UPTIME attendees in June 2023. “The more of these robots that you put in one single space, the more other mechanisms of connectivity fall down and become unreliable or unsafe.”

Gull makes a strong case that systems such as private 5G networks give users reliable bandwidth and, for firms, can be ‘where they want them, when they want them, and how they want them’. And companies are no longer held back by the downsides of basing their operations on a public mobile network.

Laying the tracks to 5G-powered industries! Hungary's EWG Intermodal Terminal partnered with #Huawei to deploy a powerful private #5G network to manage freight, automated cranes, and staff management, completely changing the game in rail industry safety and efficiency.… pic.twitter.com/k0rh0JGm1b

— Huawei (@Huawei) July 26, 2023

Adding to the appeal of being in full control, firms may find that they are able to stack multiple use cases on private 5G networks. Beyond automation, systems can also enable asset tracking, help with training, streamline maintenance, and provide ERP integration – to give just a few additional applications.

Once businesses have the fat bandwidth that 5G offers, there’s a lot that they can do. And low latency (plus video over wireless) opens the door to accurate remote control, which has broad appeal across a wide range of industries – from logistics to healthcare.

“Most enterprises start with something that is really key to them and that’s oftentimes connectivity availability,” Gull points out. “And once that’s resolved, you can build on that.” Cellnex, headquartered in Spain, has more than 138,000 sites on which mobile network operators (MNOs) put their infrastructure. And it has cell towers located in 12 countries.

What private 5G network architecture do you need?

The multiple antennas associated with 5G infrastructure enable powerful beamforming capabilities. Signals from multiple 5G radios can be purposefully overlapped and grouped together. And regions of constructive interference in the emissions can even be steered toward devices by adjusting the phase of each of those broadcasts.

As the name suggests, mobile networks are ideal for maintaining connections on the move, and beamforming adds further precision to the technology. Using beamforming methods, signals can be tuned to follow devices. Buildings can be utilized too, as reflective surfaces to bounce mobile signals to recipients.

One of the trade-offs of using much higher frequencies, which offer more bandwidth, is that these shorter wavelength mobile signals don’t travel as far. But beamforming has been shown to compensate for this, putting suitably configured 5G systems on par with longer wavelength 4G networks, in terms of coverage – at least at the lower end of the 5G spectrum.

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Technically, to use 3GPP (the standards group for mobile broadband) terminology, a private 5G network is dubbed a ‘5G non-public network’, highlighting the absence of commercial MNO subscribers. And, as mentioned, such networks could be providing industrial control or replacing enterprise Wi-Fi.

Radio access requires physical hardware, but core network elements can be virtualized and made available in the cloud. Also, circling back to the security advantage for businesses running private 5G networks, enterprise systems will only be visible to authorized user equipment.

Devices belonging to the 5G non-public network will look for a standalone non-public network (SNPN) ID. In contrast, consumer devices latch onto mobile services based on a public land mobile number (PLMN) ID – a combination of a mobile country code and a mobile network code – which is one of the details contained on a handset’s SIM.

Private 5G network starter kit

AWS is trying to bridge the knowledge gap for business users who are thinking about experimenting with private 5G services. The cloud giant has a kit that’s priced based on network traffic rather than the number of connected devices. And, based on the AWS demo video, the setup process is straightforward – comparable to configuring a Wi-Fi network.

Taking a kit-based first step gives firms the chance to run small-scale pilot schemes ahead of making larger investments in mobile infrastructure. And AWS is by no means the only vendor offering easy to navigate solutions. Firecell’s Orion Private 5G dashboard requires no knowledge of a 5G network architecture and configuration.

And the French firm, which aims to democratize private networks and believes in open source as the way forward in telecoms, can supply clients with a rack server, access point, ten pre-configured SIM cards, and one omnidirectional antenna to see how a private 5G network can improve company performance.

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If the idea of private 5G networks sounds appealing and you want to run the numbers on whether it’s an investment that’s worthwhile for your organization, Nokia has made available a 5G business modeling tool. The web application allows users to compare the total cost of ownership of Wi-Fi versus 5G wireless and is based on more than 220+ customer use cases.

Returning to the Frost & Sullivan observations at the top of the story, businesses could end up being the big winners from 5G, as telecoms firms will be highly motivated to tailor their solutions to industrial clients.

“Communications Service Providers (CSPs) have invested significantly in 5G,” emphasizes Morley. “The stark truth is those CSPs depending just on the consumer market for a return on investment will fail.”

The post Is a private 5G network the right choice for your business? appeared first on TechHQ.