5G Field Network Solution Enabling Digital and Intelligent Upgrade of Industrial Manufacturing

In the past decade, China has made significant progress in intelligent manufacturing, but most enterprises are still in the early stage of transformation towards intelligence. At the end of 2021, the equipment networking rate of industrial manufacturing enterprises in China was only 28.78%, the automatic data collection rate for production was 40.1%, and the full-process quality traceability was only 16.97%. A large number of production elements such as personnel, machinery, materials, methods, environment, and measurement have not yet been interconnected. To achieve the networking of a large number of dumb devices on the production site, significant changes are required for the existing industrial Ethernet and field buses based on wired technology. These changes involve adding ports and devices, rewiring, and reconfiguration, which entail a large and complex workload, a long cycle, high costs, and a significant impact on production.

However, by seamlessly integrating 5G field networks with existing industrial networks, intelligent upgrading and transformation of industrial enterprises can become smoother, faster, lower-cost, and more efficient in operation.

What's 5G Field Network

5G Field network refers to a 5G network deployed in production sites such as production lines and shopfloors, connecting production elements of people, machines, materials, methods, environment and measurement to achieve local real-time closed-loop processing of applications in core production domain such as data acquisition, industrial control and production management. This network is also integrated with operational, information and communication technologies (OICT). As the application of 5G in the industrial enterprises has gradually expanded from peripheral production assistance to core production control, the 5G field network will accelerate the pace of 5G deep into the core production control and make industrial manufacturing flexible, digital and intelligent.

Solution

Taking into account the industry characteristics such as local real-time closed-loop processing of OT business flow in production lines or shopfloors, short production cycle, automatic connection of process flow, and frequent adjustment of flexible manufacturing lines, ZTE has developed a 5G field network solution that integrates terminals, network, cloud, applications and maintenance (Fig. 1). This solution provides a one-stop, low-latency, low-jitter, and high-availability deterministic wireless network for the core production business, meeting the needs of flexible, digital and intelligent upgrade of industrial manufacturing.

The 5G field network offers the following benefits:

• Cloud-network integration and local closed-loop of business operations: Industrial dedicated i5GC, 5G industrial base station, and intelligent 5G industrial gateway are based on the carrier-grade TECS Cloud Foundation (TCF), supporting on-demand deployment of third-party industrial applications such as manufacturing execution system (MES), warehouse management system (WMS), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and cloud-based programmable logic controller (PLC). The 5G field network achieves the shortest path and optimal architecture from production devices to the platform, deeply integrates with OICT, and creates a closed-loop of business operations between production devices.
• Native deterministic network capabilities: The 5G field network natively supports end-to-end deterministic network capabilities such as URLLC enhancement, 5G LAN, time sensitive network (TSN), frame replication and elimination for reliability (FRER), board/NE/link backup, and high-precision indoor positioning. It can provide a deterministic performance guarantee for core production operations such as industrial control.
• Lightweight equipment and simplified networking: The lightweight 5G core network i5GC is based on carrier-grade 5GC and only includes essential 5G network functions. It adopts a unified virtualized network function (VNF) design and simplifies the internal communication mechanism, requiring only a single server at its simplest configuration. The industrial base station and intelligent industrial gateway achieve high integration, hyper-convergence, and industrial-grade high reliability. With end-to-end 5G LAN Layer 2 communication capabilities, the 5G network provides simplified networking where "devices hop onto the platfrom" without the need for deploying and configuring tunnel devices, seamlessly connecting or smoothly replacing traditional wired production networks.
• Multi-protocol one-stop access: The industrial-grade intelligent 5G industrial gateway SmartEdge 6100 supports rich access modes such as RS-485/232, CAN, Ethernet or WiFi, as well as a variety of industrial protocols such as CANBus, Modbus, EtherCAT, OPC UA, and S7 Comm, which can seamlessly connect with different types of industrial equipment.
• Free from planning, debugging and O&M: Customers can be free from network planning through 3D laser environmental survey, 3D modeling and business-oriented network pre-planning. They can be free from network debugging through factory pre-installed software version, out-of-the-box on site, one-click modification, and hour-level commissioning. They can also be free from network O&M through service-oriented terminal and service supervision, visual presentation, automatic maintenance and optimization.

Application and Practice

The 5G field network solution is applicable to the construction of 5G fully-connected factories at the production line/shopfloor levels. It focuses on operational technology (OT) domain applications in industrial production, achieves ubiquitous connectivity of production elements and deep integration of OT and IT, and empowers digital and intelligent transformation of industrial manufacturing. ZTE, together with telecom operators and industry partners, has carried out extensive practice in the field of industrial manufacturing.

• Full-Lifecycle Service

A production line integration and service provider for certain equipment manufacturing deploys ZTE's 5G field network solution on the production line of its end customer. The 5G field network can connect equipment on the production line, collect equipment data in real time, and provide full-lifecycle service including production line assembly and debugging, operation management, efficiency management, energy consumption management, predictive maintenance, and health assessment based on ZTE's self-developed intelligent manufacturing data service platform. In addition to low-latency high-reliability end-to-end deterministic capabilities, the 5G field network also provides computing power and deployment environments for data acquisition and intelligent manufacturing data service platform, thus achieving all-in-one deployment of production, network and applications, IT/OT integration, and local real-time closed-loop of business operations in production lines.

• Centralized Control

A logistics automatic sorting line provided by a logistics automation equipment and system integrator to its customer includes more than 20 PLCs and several industrial control servers. The master PLC of the line body and the slave PLC on the sorting trolley communicate in real-time through WiFi and leaky-wave cables, resulting in poor stability, high cost and difficult maintenance. When using the 5G field network, master PLCs of the line body are cloudified and deployed on the industrial base station, while slave PLCs on the sorting trolley are cloudified and deployed on the intelligent 5G industrial gateway. Through 5G, the master and salve PLCs can communicate in real time. Therefore, centralized control of multiple PLCs can be realized on the cloud and a large number of PLCs and industrial control servers are saved. This reduces costs and improve reliability.

• Automatic Production

ZTE Nanjing Binjiang Factory has built its 5G QCell production shopfloor based on the 5G field network. The 5G QCell production shopfloor has achieved automated production from raw materials to finished products. It reduces labor costs, increases the product qualification rate, and improves production efficiency. Its main application scenarios include 5G-based GV, 5G-based machine vision, 5G-based SMT, 5G-based data acquisition, 5G-based cloud PLC, and 5G high-precision indoor positioning.

ZTE's 5G field network solution is specially designed for 5G to enter the core production process. It features lightweight and simplicity, cloud-network integration, native determinism capabilities, and customer self-service. As a cloud-network base, it supports the comprehensive connection of production elements, production links, and business processes. It is a preferred solution for the construction of 5G fully-connected factories in production lines/shopfloors, enabling digital and intelligent upgrade of industrial manufacturing.