by Gary Mintchell | Mar 10, 2023 | Networking, News
More news from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, this one concerning working with telco networks.
In brief:
- New network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will enable developers to build and innovate with telco network capabilities
- Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile US address global use cases with joint platform and new network APIs
- First partner: Siemens Energy optimizes user experience for remote maintenance using a Quality-on-Demand (QoD) API
- Collaboration with Microsoft will make it easier for developers to access the network APIs via Microsoft Azure Programmable Connectivity
Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile US have developed a platform with joint Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) – called T-DevEdge – to make it easy and simple for the global developer community to create new, connected solutions. These APIs will give developers a direct and simplified entryway to connectivity and other core network services on both sides of the Atlantic.
As one of the first, Siemens Energy is using one of the new APIs for Quality-on-Demand to optimize its remote maintenance. Microsoft is the first cloud provider to integrate the new set of network APIs into their cloud platform through the Microsoft Azure Programmable Connectivity Software Development Kit (SDK).
To ensure that global standards for APIs are defined and used, Deutsche Telekom, among others, founded the CAMARA Alliance. The CAMARA initiative consists of network operators, cloud providers, application developers and technology and operating system vendors. The alliance was announced during the MWC in 2022 and has grown up to eleven API families, more than 50 partners and more than 300 people working in the different groups of the community.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 7, 2023 | Business, Manufacturing IT, News, Process Control
Here are a few items that I’ve come across plus one where I’m the news (so to speak).
Mark your calendars! The Ignition Community Conference will return to the Harris Center on September 26–28, 2023. Registration will be open soon.
I’ve been asked to present at a Webinar on a new Website–Manufacturing Technology Today. Going Beyond Digital Transformation: The Real Innovations in Manufacturing. Check it out. Register. Heckle me in the chat 😉 April 5, 2023.
Emerson sent an email about its Virtual Exchange–a rerun of its live/virtual event from last October. I wrote about Boundless Automation and other news from the event back then. Check it out for a refresh.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 6, 2023 | Business, News
This news of Telit rebranding sent my memory back many years to a spinoff company called ILS Technology whose executives would whisk me off to a hotel suite for demos of their connectivity technology. That company was acquired by what eventually became Telit. That company has continued to evolve into applications as diverse as telematics/ asset tracking, EVs, smart utilities, smart cities, security/ surveillance, healthcare and enterprise all related to IoT technology.
A side note: I’ve often pondered this “rebranding” idea. I’ve been involved with a couple of companies who “rebranded”—often accompanied with a two-page letter explaining the name, font, color, logo. Are they covering up something of the past? Or just needed a new identity? At any rate, here is the news from Mobile World Congress.
Telit Cinterion, a global enabler of the intelligent edge, February 27 announced the completion of its global rebranding effort emphasizing the company’s established and rapidly expanding position in the IoT marketplace. Following on the heels of Telit Cinterion’s debut earlier this year, the brand unveiling at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona exemplifies the company’s end-to-end IoT offering serving the world’s largest enterprises, OEMs, system integrators and service providers.
Telit Cinterion’s new branding encapsulates the company’s vision of enabling a new era of hyper-connectivity, where everything is seamlessly and securely networked, with full orchestration of edge and cloud data. Harnessing invisible intelligence, Telit Cinterion maps data points spanning numerous industries including transportation, education, medicine, energy, and security — to solve business problems efficiently and securely.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 1, 2023 | Automation, Networking, News, Technology
Qualcomm participated in the deluge of 5G news emanating from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Oh, yes, I still wish I were there. There were probably not enough contacts to justify the trip, though. Here are the five pieces of news I’ve received.
- 5G Advanced-Ready Modem-RF System
- Globally Certified Module Reference Designs
- Dell Technologies For 5G Open RAN
- Schneider Electric and CapGemini for Industrial 5G
- Simplify and Accelerate IoT
World’s First 5G Advanced-Ready Modem-RF System
Highlights:
- Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System sets the benchmark for smartphone connectivity with the world’s first 5G Advanced-ready Modem-RF System
- Snapdragon X75 is also designed to drive the next stage of 5G evolution in all key verticals including vehicles, PCs, Industrial IoT and more.
- Powered by Snapdragon X75, Qualcomm Fixed Wireless Access Platform Gen 3 is the world’s first fully integrated 5G Advanced-ready fixed wireless access platform for 5G fixed internet access with an aim to bridge the digital divide.
Snapdragon X75 is the first Modem-RF System with a dedicated hardware tensor accelerator, Qualcomm® 5G AI Processor Gen 2, enabling over 2.5 times better AI performance compared to Gen 1 and introduces Qualcomm® 5G AI Suite Gen 2 with new AI-powered optimizations to achieve better speeds, coverage, mobility, link robustness and location accuracy. The Qualcomm 5G AI Suite features advanced AI-based capabilities including world’s first sensor-assisted mmWave beam management and AI-enhanced GNSS Location Gen 2, which uniquely optimize Snapdragon X75 for superior 5G performance.
Globally Certified Module Reference Designs
Highlights:
- Snapdragon X75, X72, and X35 5G M.2 and LGA Reference Designs aim to make 5G readily available for various product segments such as FWA, compute, gaming, and more.
- Globally certified turnkey reference designs optimize development costs to enable faster time to market.
- Reference designs are currently sampling with commercialization starting in the second half of 2023.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the Snapdragon X75, X72, and X35 5G M.2 and LGA Reference Designs, which expand on the previous announcement from February 2022. Leveraging the latest, most robust features of Snapdragon X75, X72, and X35 5G Modem-RF Systems, this product portfolio offers OEMs a turnkey solution, globally certified to work with 5G networks from all key mobile network operators worldwide, thus allowing to develop the next generation 5G devices and bring consumers a wide spectrum of 5G-enabled devices from PCs to XR to gaming, and beyond.
These new reference designs integrate modem, transceivers, and RF front-end in a single and compact board, allowing manufacturers to quickly and cost-effectively include the capabilities of the novel Snapdragon Modem-RF Systems into new products, driving 5G adoption into a wide spectrum of devices. Snapdragon X75 and X72 5G Reference Designs support both sub-6 and mmWave bands, while Snapdragon X35 5G Reference Designs are the first to support 5G NR-Light (3GPP Release 17 RedCap).
Key features of the portfolio of reference designs include:
- These turnkey reference design solutions are optimized for performance and certified to work with 5G networks from all key mobile network operators globally. The Snapdragon X75, X72, and X35 5G Reference Designs are available in M.2 and LGA form factors.
- Providing design and certification support, OEMs, ODMs, and device manufacturers can develop global 5G module solutions with sub-6 and mmWave at a fraction of the cost available today by saving on engineering time, cost, and effort required to enable 5G connectivity using discrete cellular components.
- Enables OEMs, ODMs, and device manufacturers to leverage Qualcomm Technologies’ reference designs to accelerate end-product sampling and launch timelines while putting 5G in the hands of the consumer quicker.
Qualcomm and Dell Technologies to Accelerate 5G Open RAN Design and Deployments
- Companies aim to develop a virtualized distributed unit (vDU) solution to accelerate efficient, high-capacity deployments of next-generation 5G networks.
- Dell PowerEdge servers purpose-built for open telecom networks and the edge, combined with the Qualcomm X100 5G RAN Accelerator Card with commercial-grade Layer 1 (L1) software, aim to provide a high-performing, cost-effective and energy-efficient solution for OEMs and operators deploying virtualized and Open RAN solutions.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced plans to collaborate with Dell Technologies to develop a next-generation, 5G vDU, integrating the Qualcomm X100 5G RAN Accelerator Card into Dell PowerEdge servers. The solution will help usher in the next wave of digital transformation and proliferate Open RAN deployments globally. The companies plan to simplify deployments and help lower total cost of ownership by delivering high-performance, O-RAN compliant, energy-efficient, virtualized, cloud-native 5G solutions.
Schneider Electric and Capgemini Collaborate to Accelerate 5G Industrial Automation, Supported by Qualcomm
- The companies have customized an innovative end-to-end 5G Private Network solution with the potential of transforming industrial automation systems.
- Through highly advanced virtual connectivity, the system has the ability to be deployed across diverse industrial and logistics sites.
Schneider Electric, Capgemini, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced their collaboration on a first-of-its-kind 5G-enabled automated hoisting solution. The companies have joined efforts on design and installation of the solution at Schneider Electric’s hoisting lab in Grenoble, France. Replacing wired connections with wireless and unifying existing wireless connections from Schneider Electric’s industrial automation system, the 5G Private Network solution demonstrates how it can simplify and optimize digital technology deployment at scale across industrial sites — from steel plants to ports.
The 5G private network hoisting solution:
- Replaces wired and other wireless connections for several critical PLC control flows and time sensitive video flows powering numerous use cases
- Operates in 3.8GHz radio frequency band, with an enterprise-grade Athonet core network and Airspan Small Cells using the Qualcomm® FSM™100 5G RAN Platform, significantly improving connectivity performance and enabling new use cases
- Beyond its core industrial functions, the Private 5G automated hoisting system can now be leveraged to deliver additional digital use cases, such as augmented operators enabled by XR (eXtended Reality) and wearable devices.
Qualcomm Expands Offering to Simplify and Accelerate IoT Across Multiple Industries
- Drives innovation across edge devices and cloud by offering silicon and software services for functions commonly required for digital transformation such as location and condition monitoring
- Addresses the fragmented nature of digital transformation use-cases by enabling developers through API-first architectures and user-friendly tools with an ecosystem of hardware and software partners
- Expands the Company’s traditional hardware business model with the introduction of ongoing IoT services
- Qualcomm Aware will initially target real-time supply chain visibility and intelligence
- Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today unveiled the Qualcomm Aware Platform, which empowers developers and enterprises to harness real-time information and data insights to accelerate their digital transformation programs.
The Qualcomm Aware advantage rests upon three key pillars: (1) technology leadership; (2) Enablement of an expansive ecosystem of hardware and software partners; and (3) an API-first architecture and developer-friendly tools that enable interoperability with partner clouds and leading enterprise software tools.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 28, 2023 | Automation, Motion Control, Networking, News, Technology, Wireless
I wish I were in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, but at least the sun is shining in northern Illinois as I accumulate news from the event. And the word of the day is 5G. This post focuses on Nokia and how it has moved on from the mobile handset business.
Two things: first of two moves by Dell Technologies this time with Nokia plus 5G positioning (as in manufacturing a piece) technology with Bosch. Check out the “hardware-as-a-service” model and high end compute. I spent some time working with a team at Dell several years ago as they searched for a manufacturing use case. Looks like they’re playing with a new one.
Nokia bolsters MX Industrial Edge Capabilities
- Nokia MXIE to leverage high-performance Dell PowerEdge server family to support the increasing processing needs of Industry 4.0 use cases
- Nokia introduces MXIE GPU support for advanced real-time video analytics applications and to unlock future business-critical AI and machine learning OT use cases
- Nokia to offer MXIE in a Hardware-as-a-Service model, reducing CAPEX requirements to allow more enterprises to digitalize operations leveraging OT data
Nokia announced it is working with other industry-leading technology providers as it boosts the capabilities of the off-the-shelf, Mission-Critical Industrial Edge (MXIE) to manage the growing digitalization demands of industries. Nokia will also make it possible for many more enterprises to realize the value of operational technology (OT) data with the introduction of MXIE in a Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) model.
As enterprises implement a growing number of Industry 4.0 use cases, such as autonomous robots in a factory or warehouse leveraging real-time situational awareness for safety, or zero-fault manufacturing using advanced real-time video analytics for efficiency, demand is growing for high-capacity, on-premise edge processing. To support this, Nokia is introducing a new high-performance, high-capacity infrastructure platform from Dell Technologies, beginning with the Dell PowerEdge XR11 server to further increase the processing power of the MXIE to handle the most demanding and complex workloads.
The new Dell PowerEdge XR11 server-based MXIE featuring 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor introduces physical graphics processing unit (GPU) support. The high-performance NVIDIA A2 Tensor Core GPU enables versatile *AI inference acceleration.
This, for example, will unlock business-critical use cases that rely on real-time monitoring of video feeds and alerts using applications such as Nokia Scene Analytics or Atos Computer Vision Platform, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) for quality assurance and video analytics solutions for mission-critical applications.
By offering MXIE in a HaaS model, Nokia will enable more enterprises to begin their digitalization journey. This will reduce up-front capital investment, and allow them to benefit from MXIE capabilities on a subscription basis.
Nokia and Bosch Set a New Bar for 5G Positioning and Look Ahead to 6G
- Proof-of-concept network in Germany demonstrated accuracy within 50 cm
- Nokia and Bosch are continuing their joint research in 6G, exploring the integration of sensing technologies in future 6G systems
Nokia and Bosch announced that they have jointly developed 5G-based precision positioning technology intended for new Industry 4.0 use cases. The two have deployed the proof of concept in a Bosch production plant in Germany, where extensive tests under realistic manufacturing conditions have shown an accuracy within 50 cm in 90 percent of the factory footprint.
The positioning technology tracks mobile and portable devices connected to the 5G network, accurately determining their positions where no global navigation satellite service coverage is available, for instance in factories, warehouses or underground facilities. As part of the factory test, an enhanced private 5G network was able to determine the precise position of assets such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), mobile robots and mobile control panels – tracking their movements throughout the plant in real time.
Traditionally, 5G positioning works by measuring the time it takes for mobile signals to travel from a mobile device to different base stations and anchor nodes in the network. As signals take longer to reach nodes that are further away, the positioning system can triangulate its source. Nokia and Bosch have built upon that foundation by equipping 5G nodes with multiple receive antennas, which enable the network to detect the incoming angles of signals. Advanced Nokia Bell Labs algorithms interpret this time-delay and angle-of-arrival information to determine the most probable position of the mobile device. Their proof-of-concept achieves a level of accuracy well beyond the current cellular position state-of-the-art, providing a sneak peek at what 5G networks, both public and private, will be capable of in the future.
Precision localization is important for many applications in industrial environments, such as robot navigation, asset tracking and worker safety. Realizing both high-performance connectivity and high-accuracy positioning within a single private network’s infrastructure also has many operational benefits, such as reducing the complexity of IT infrastructure, leading to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and higher returns on investments.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 24, 2023 | Automation, News, Organizations, Process Control, Standards
One of the meetings I look forward to these days at the ARC Forum in Orlando concerns updates from The Open Process Automation Forum, a working group of The Open Group.
This year I met with OPAF leaders Mohan Kalyanaraman and Ryan Smeltzer for a private briefing and then attended one of the OPAF sessions in the general forum. Widespread interest in their work was evidenced by the turnout of more than 200 people.
The OPAS 2.1 version of the standard is considered to be stable and suppliers can build products to it. Conformance requirements and testing are in process and due this year. Security guidelines and adoption guides are due to be completed this year.
Test beds and a pilot project have been completed. A few companies have scheduled test beds to their requirements. ExxonMobil is proceeding with a field trial that includes DCS/PLC that are commercially available compliant with OPAS 2.1. The project includes a single operator, single console, 2,500 I/O, and 100 control loops.
Further, OPAF is working with OPC Foundation for joint standard for Field Exchange and is also working with NAMUR ZVEI in Europe.
A little history and context
This work was instigated by ExxonMobil made public in 2016. That company faced upgrading its automation platforms at considerable expense. Other end user companies faced the same challenge. Schneider Electric, Yokogawa, and ABB were early boosters from the technology provider side of the equation.
I have followed a few of these initiatives. I can see the value of open systems. They have worked well in the IT market. However, gaining adoption is exceedingly difficult. Many suppliers may talk open systems, but in the end they want to keep everything tied together in house. To the outside world, they’ll say that they can assure all the parts will work together better because they are all designed by the same company. On the other hand, they really want to establish a long-term relationship with a large customer that is difficult to break. Lots of conflicting desires and business needs.
This project is gaining traction. It will only work in the end if enough end users specify the products and enforce procurement and application. Another project I once followed stumbled at this stage. One corporate engineering staff approved the open standard, but they could not enforce procurement at the plant level. We’ll see where this one goes.
