WISCO: Building an Industry Benchmark for 5G Fully-Connected Factories

Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Corporation was the first super-large iron and steel complex established after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In 2016, it merged with Baosteel Group Corporation Limited to form the China Baowu Steel Group Corporation Limited, which is now the country's most modern and competitive iron and steel joint enterprise and the world's leading modern steel conglomerate.

Since 2021, Wuhan Unicom, ZTE, and Wuhan Iron and Steel Company Limited (known as WISCO) have worked together to build a 5G full-connected factory, which is the first project to deploy dedicated 5G core network and transport network in the enterprise campus in Hubei Province. Six applications have been deployed based on this 5G private network, including "5G+ intelligent iron and steel control platform" and "unmanned overhead travelling crane".

The iron and steel industry involves various stages such as material selection, ironmaking, steelmaking, continuous casting, rolling steel, energy & environmental management, logistics management, and quality management. However, the IT level of the industry varies widely, and many links still rely on manual operations, resulting in low production efficiency. In response, China Baowu has been promoting industrial intelligence since 2019. Meanwhile, with the arrival of 5G era, China Baowu is focusing on using 5G networks for efficient production, safe production, energy saving, consumption reduction, and high-value equipment guarantee. They also aim to develop more diversified 5G+ industrial Internet applications.

After two years of exploration and practice, WISCO has developed a "1+N+X" 5G construction and application mode.

"1+N+X" Mode

• "1" Dedicated Core Network

Traditional ToC core networks cannot meet the diverse requirements of industry users. To address this, a dedicated 5GC has been directly deployed in the WISCO campus to meet their requirements for physical device and data security isolation. This ensures that service data stays within the campus while also providing users with very low service latency and dedicated service SLAs.

• "N" 5G Shared Base Stations

Currently, 63 5G base stations (excluding private 5G network sites) have been built in the WISCO campus, with the 5G coverage rate reaching over 95%. This is one of the largest 5G campus networks in China. These 5G base stations can meet the network requirements of ToC users through network sharing, and the service requirements of ToB users through network slicing. At present, the outdoor 5G campus network can carry non-production services such as environment monitoring, device status monitoring, and HD video backhaul with the daily average data traffic reaching 4 TB.

• "X" Industrial Control Private Networks

Compared with ToC networks, ToB networks have stricter requirements for network capabilities such as delay and reliability in their industry application scenarios. Providing highly cost-effective network connections has become one of the core capabilities of ToB networks.

In the 5G network construction of WISCO, industrial control private networks are built in different factories according to their specific service scenarios in the production domain. The ZTE 5G computing power base for industrial control provides an integrated solution that includes terminals, edges, clouds, networks, and services. It also provides end-to-end service connection monitoring. The typical capabilities of each part of the 5G computing power base for industrial control are as follows:

• SE9102 is an industrial control gateway, which is an important component of the "terminals" and "edges". In the project of WISCO, it is connected to both PLC and HD IP cameras, and offers key network capabilities such as highly reliable transmission of control data and low-latency video backhaul. Industrial-grade product design with a protection level of IP66 can meet the requirements of various harsh environments.
• The dual-band 5G network (2.1 GHz+3.5 GHz) ensures the security and reliability of the network to the highest degree through independent physical devices. On-site engineers can simulate more than 10 types of network faults to ensure that single-point radio link faults do not affect services. Even if the 5G base station backhaul link is interrupted, the existing services on site can still be kept for more than 24 hours.
• The SE9102 and the NodeEngine base station with a built-in computing engine can collaborate to create an inter-frequency dual-transmit optimal reception channel with a network latency of 20 ms@99.99%. In addition, service data can be offloaded and processed locally in the shopfloor through the NodeEngine base station with a built-in computing engine, achieving the integration of "network" and "service".
• The IDOS R88 is an intelligent digital O&M portal for enterprise users. It is a lightweight, plug-and-play, end-to-end, intelligent, and minimalistic O&M system that provides end-to-end visual monitoring of service scenarios, including the performance data of the entire network, system fault alarms and SLA assurance. The IDOS R88 works with the NodeEngine base station with a built-in computing engine to realize the integration of cloud and network within the private network of WISCO. This enables fast deployment without the need for additional hardware.

5G Brings Infinite Possibilities

In November 2022, China's 5G+ Industrial Internet Conference was held in Wuhan, Hubei Province. The conference was jointly hosted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Hubei Provincial Government with the theme of "Integrating Everything with Digital Intelligence to Create the Future". It showcased the latest achievements of China's integrated development of the 5G+ industrial Internet. The "unmanned application of WISCO based on 5G industrial control private network" jointly built by ZTE and Wuhan Unicom with WISCO was selected as a typical application example at the conference.

ZTE's 5G computing power base for industrial control promotes the integration of IT, CT and OT while meeting the high reliability requirements of industrial control. It has achieved the large-scale implementation of the unmanned overhead travelling crane in hot-rolling, cold-rolling, and silicon steel production shopfloors. The on-board PLC is connected to the warehouse management system through 5G, and the HD videos

from inside the factory are transmitted back to the centralized control room in real time, enabling unmanned and automatic control of the overhead travelling crane. This has greatly improved the safety and overall efficiency of production. In the future, ZTE's 5G computing power base for industrial control will also be applied in more core production fields such as smart molten steel transport and unmanned stacker-reclaimers.

WISCO Model Leads Intelligent Digital Transformation of Steel Industry

Under the guidance of 5G full-connected factory construction, WISCO, a leading enterprise in the steel industry in China, is continuously strengthening the penetration of 5G technologies in the core production field. They are moving from single-point scenarios to systematic and comprehensive applications in production lines, shopfloors, campuses, and enterprises. 

ZTE will collaborate with Wuhan Unicom to further improve the end-edge-cloud-network integration capability of the 5G computing power base for industrial control. They will explore more core production scenarios of WISCO and build an industry benchmark for 5G fully-connected factory. The model of WISCO will also be applied to more steel companies, facilitating the intelligent digital transformation of the steel metallurgy industry and promoting the industry's long-term high-quality development.