In June 2023, China ushered in the fourth anniversary of 5G commercial use. Four years ago in June, China issued 5G licenses, announcing the arrival of the 5G commercial era and opening the accelerated mode of 5G network construction. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of April 2023, China had built more than 2.73 million 5G base stations, 5G networks covered all cities, counties and urban areas in the country, and 5G mobile phone users reached 634 million households. After several years of rapid development, 5G applications have been integrated into nearly 60% of the national economic categories, and gradually moved from “auxiliary links” to “core links”. In the industrial field, communications experts believe that the current 5G and industrial integration is in the stage of “scale” and “longitudinal deepening”. China Mobile has launched a new 5G industrial architecture to promote 5G into the core production control of the industry, inject surging momentum into the development of the industry, and help the industry improve quality, reduce cost and increase efficiency.

Industry is the main battlefield of 5G innovation and application

5G commercial use has laid a solid network foundation for the new generation of communication technology to enable thousands of industries, and is an important new infrastructure to promote the deep integration of new technologies and the industrial economy. Wen Ku, chairman of the China Communications Standardization Association, pointed out that 5G, as a representative of the new generation of information technology, matches the needs of industrial applications with its characteristics of large bandwidth, low delay, high reliability, and wide connectivity, and has become an important engine to drive the development of global intelligent manufacturing. At present, the global 5G industrial application innovation is active, and has gradually become the main battlefield of 5G application.

IS220PPROH1A

IS220PPROH1A

According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2022, the numerical control rate of key processes in China’s key industrial enterprises has reached 58.6%, and the penetration rate of digital research and development and design tools has reached 77%. In 2022, the software industry revenue exceeded 10 trillion yuan, the industrial Internet was fully integrated into 45 national economic categories, and the influential industrial Internet platform reached 240. “Industrial digital transformation and upgrading has become one of the main battlefields for 5G applications.” Tang Libo, deputy director of the Institute of Technology and Standards of the China ICT Academy, said. In view of the deepening of application tests of 5G technical characteristics such as low time delay, high reliability and large bandwidth, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology analyzed more than 1,600 global 5G application tests (incomplete statistics), and found that 5G innovative applications are increasingly focused on the industrial digitization level, accounting for about 60%, of which the convergence application around the industrial Internet reached 29.4%. According to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), 5G is expected to bring $290 billion in benefits to China’s economy by 2030, of which 57% will come from manufacturing, far higher than other industries.

The new 5G industrial architecture enables enterprises to upgrade their digital intelligence

Wen Ku, chairman of the China Communications Standardization Association, said that in China, the application of 5G in the industrial field starts fast, explores early, and has a first-mover advantage. In Chongqing home appliance manufacturing plant and Zhejiang Aosdan factory, the 5G industrial cloud base station launched by China Mobile has achieved scenario-oriented landing applications. According to the data of China Mobile Research Institute, while 5G industrial cloud base stations provide high-quality network connections for factories, industrial applications such as industrial control PLC, HMI, intelligent scheduling planning, machine vision quality inspection, and intelligent transport vehicle guidance are flexibly deployed on industrial base stations, which has improved product quality by 10% and storage efficiency by 15%. Labor input has been reduced by 15%, and production efficiency has been greatly improved.

Deng Wei, director of the Wireless Terminal Research Institute of China Mobile Research Institute, stressed that 5G industrial cloud base station conforms to the development trend of industrial network cloud-based, centralized and wireless, so that 5G can penetrate into the core field of industrial field, promote the development of industrial field networking from distributed to collaborative centralized, and lay a solid foundation for the high-quality development of industrial enterprises and the transformation of digital intelligence. It is reported that in order to play a long role in the modern industrial chain of mobile information and promote the application of 5G technology in the industrial field, China Mobile Group selected eight “secretariat” units, of which the Institute of Wireless and Terminal Technology of China Mobile Research Institute undertook research in mobile communication related fields, focusing on wireless network, terminal equipment, transmission network, core network and other industrial card points.

It is understood that the 5G industrial cloud base station launched by China Mobile Research Institute is a key support for realizing China Mobile’s 5G-enhanced industrial centralized control architecture. Deng Wei told China Industry News that with 5G gradually penetrating into the core production control link, the application at the production line level began to enter the turning stage from exploration.

Industrial control system is the base of intelligent transformation of industrial enterprises, and PLC (programmable logic controller) is the core production control link of industry. After a large number of research and analysis, China Mobile Research Institute found that the current industrial site wired networking is facing poor flexibility, high PLC physical entity cost, data from different manufacturers can not be interconnected and other pain points, and the existing 5G “best effort” transmission can not meet the needs of industrial site business. To this end, the China Mobile Research Institute proposed an industrial centralized control architecture based on 5G enhancement. This new architecture realizes the transformation of production line level control from wired to wireless, from distribution to centralized, and provides a new direction for the development of industrial control while solving the problems of high PLC deployment cost and poor flexibility of wired networking. The centralized industrial control architecture can realize the seamless and efficient flow of data, and drive the improvement of industrial total factor efficiency and innovation through the agglomeration and sharing of data elements and integrated application, enhance the competitiveness of Chinese industrial enterprises, and help the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing.