I was delighted to represent Real Wireless and showcase the 5G business case analysis and socio-economic benefits of the Hamburg smart sea port testbed at the final event of the 5G-MoNArch project.
Held in Hamburg in June, the exhibition brought together key project partners, including Real Wireless, for live demonstrations of the Deutsche Telekom (DT), Nokia and Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) smart sea port. Applications shown included environmental monitoring, traffic light control and augmented reality for construction and maintenance support.
Hendrik Roreger from HPA gave an overview of the operations of the Port of Hamburg, its move toward smart port initiatives and the value they see 5G networks, such as 5G-MoNArch, bringing to their industry.
I presented on the ‘verification and validation’ stand, showcasing the 5G business case analysis conducted by Real Wireless during the project and related wider socio-economic benefits. This included:
- the business case for providing industrial services in a port environment via 5G networks;
- potential cost efficiencies from 5G for serving demand hotspots; and
- assessment of the drivers for extending 5G networks from ports to benefit the wider city area, via smart city services.
Many vertical industries have heard about 5G but complain that it is not clear exactly what it is, why it is different from existing technologies and how it could benefit them – and this event has helped to bridge that gap. There was a lot of interest in the business case and wider socio-economic benefits of this testbed and of 5G. The feedback from visitors has been excellent with many saying that they are looking forward to seeing our final report once it’s published in July.
The Smart Sea Port testbed exhibition included:
- Network slice creation and management – fast and scalable service-specific networking: real-time design, creation, deployment and deletion of network slices in the live testbed through the testbed’s GUI
- Network slice isolation – highly reliable traffic light control: impact of slice isolation on the performance of the traffic light control, in particular with respect to latency (since the actual traffic light of the testbed is installed at a road far away from the event location, for the purpose of the event, a mobile traffic light was installed in front of the building, such that the isolation impact could directly be seen)
- Multi-connectivity – IoT sensors on mobile barges for air quality measurements: the live measurements from the three barges roaming in the port could be monitored together with network KPIs from the multi-connectivity as well as the multi-slice modems installed
- New services – eMBB-improved port operations using connected augmented reality headsets: two dedicated demonstrations of the AR applications were given to the visitors in particular to visualise the importance of the digital technologies within the smart sea port scenarios
