Recently, Airbus partnered with Ericsson to deploy private 5G networks at two of its manufacturing plants — one in Hamburg, Germany, now fully operational, and another in Toulouse, France, expected to be completed by 2026. These sites serve as proof points in industrial digitalization, targeting automation, traceability, AR/VR support, and high-performance connectivity across shop floors.
This article examines how these networks are built, the enabled use cases, design challenges, and what lessons can be applied elsewhere. So, now let us look into Private 5G Deployment at Manufacturing Sites in Hamburg & Toulouse Case Study along with Accurate LTE RF drive test tools in telecom & RF drive test software in telecom and Accurate 5g tester, 5G test equipment, 5g network tester tools in detail.
Network Design & Architecture
Core Network & Edge
- Each plant uses a private 5G core that handles mobility management, session control, authentication, slicing, and routing.
- To support low-latency tasks (e.g. AR overlays, control loops), edge compute servers are placed near the campus, reducing RTT (round-trip time).
- The core and edge communicate over secure, high-bandwidth links, often fiber or high-capacity microwave, ensuring reliable backhaul.
Radio Access & Coverage
- The radio layer comprises small cells / radio units positioned to cover workstations, production lines, storage areas, and facility periphery.
- Antenna heights, azimuth, and power levels are carefully planned to overcome obstructions such as machinery, metal structures, and layered building floors.
- In some zones, directional antennas or repeaters may be used to reach shadowed areas or extend coverage to tall equipment.
Integration & Connectivity
- The factory’s operational systems (MES, PLM, ERP) are integrated via APIs with the 5G network for data ingestion, command/control, and analytics.
- A license management system supports dynamic assignment of 5G licenses to devices (UEs) across shifts or teams.
- Devices include industrial tablets, AR/VR headsets, sensor gateways, cameras, quality-check scanners, and mobile robots.
Automation & Deployment Speed
- The solution uses infrastructure automation scripts and templates to accelerate deployment — configuration, traffic rules, slicing parameters, and security policies are predefined.
- Modular architecture with well-defined API interfaces enables easier onboarding of new factory sections or equipment without massive rework.
Key Use Cases & Data Flows
Here are several use case categories and how the traffic flows in practice.
AR / Mixed-Reality Assisted Maintenance
- Technicians wear AR headsets or tablets to overlay digital schematics, layer-by-layer instructions, or part metadata on physical equipment.
- The device receives video frames or images from an edge server, processes overlays, and returns inspection results or annotations.
- Low latency (~10–30 ms) is required so that the overlay stays aligned with the physical object during motion.
Asset Traceability & Logistics
- Part barcodes, RFID scans, or IoT sensor data are streamed continuously during production and movement.
- The network supports high packet rates with small payloads — e.g. location, status, batch ID updates — often over UDP or lightweight protocols (MQTT).
- Back-end systems map part IDs to assembly steps, flag anomalies, and maintain audit logs.
Predictive Maintenance & Sensor Streaming
- Vibration sensors, temperature logs, motor current, and error codes stream periodically (e.g. 100 Hz sampling) to the edge or core for anomaly detection.
- Models run locally (edge), flagging outliers, and forward only flagged events or aggregated summaries to central servers.
3D Simulation & Virtual Testbeds
- Engineers run digital twins or simulation workloads, sometimes augmented with real-time data from the factory floor.
- Large datasets (e.g. CAD models, sensor logs) are exchanged between local servers and engineering stations.
- Throughput demands can rise to hundreds of Mbps in bursts, particularly during sync or calibration phases.
Robotics & AGV (Automated Guided Vehicles)
- Mobile robots transport components between staging areas.
- Control loops for path planning, obstacle avoidance, and coordination require deterministic latency and high reliability.
- The private 5G connection replaces wired or Wi-Fi links that were earlier used or were inadequate in congested zones.
Performance Gains & Benefits
From the hosted deployments in Hamburg and Toulouse, the expected technical gains include:
- Lower latency and jitter
- The private system avoids public network congestion.
- Edge compute handles immediate processing and returns results quickly.
- Deterministic QoS and slicing
- Slices or priority queues ensure AR, control, or safety traffic gets bandwidth and timing guarantees.
- Comprehensive coverage and mobility
- Machines, workers, and mobile tools can move anywhere on the shop floor without handoff drops.
- Legacy Wi-Fi dead zones are eliminated or minimized.
- Reduced cabling costs
- Eliminates fiber runs or Ethernet to mobile machinery or rotating devices.
- Flexible coverage zones allow relocation or reconfiguration with minimal civil work.
- Scalability & faster rollout
- Automated configuration and modular infrastructure reduce deployment time and errors.
- New devices or factory wings can be added easily.
- Real-time visibility and control
- Data streams enable immediate feedback loops: control systems adjust parameters on the fly, anomalies trigger alerts, quality checks happen inline.
- Digital twin models can run concurrently with actual operations.
Technical Challenges & Mitigations
Some hurdles appear in industrial private 5G settings, and the Hamburg/Toulouse deployments illustrate how they can be addressed.
RF Propagation & Obstructions
- Factories contain metal walls, machinery, high racks, and dense layouts. These reflect and attenuate signals heavily.
- Use of ray-tracing tools during planning and field testing helps optimize small cell placement and orientation.
- In tight or blocked zones, additional relay nodes, or lower-power nodes help fill gaps.
Interference & Spectrum Management
- Adjacent wavelengths (public 5G, Wi-Fi, industrial radio) pose interference risks.
- The private network must operate in dedicated or reserved bands, with isolation and filtering to protect against external interference.
Synchronization & Timing
- Some industrial control protocols require synchronized clocks across devices (e.g. 1 µs or sub-microsecond).
- Use of Precision Time Protocol (PTP) or GNSS-based synchronization at the base and edge ensures alignment.
Backhaul Capacity & Redundancy
- Bursts in video, simulation data, or AR traffic demand high-capacity backhaul (e.g. 10 Gbps fiber, microwave with link aggregation).
- Redundant paths or failover links guard against single-point failures.
Security & Segmentation
- Because factory operations are sensitive, strict access control, encryption (e.g. IPSec, MACsec), and segmentation are enforced.
- Zero-trust models are used: devices are authenticated, traffic flows restricted, and lateral movement inside the network minimized.
Device Adaptation & Legacy Integration
- Older machines or sensors may not support 5G; bridging via IoT gateways or proxy nodes helps forward their data.
- Ensuring compatibility of new 5G devices with factory control systems (PLC, SCADA) requires protocol translation modules.
Rollout Strategy & Phasing
The deployment in Hamburg went live before Toulouse, following a phased strategy:
- Pilot (single production zone)
- Test small subset of use cases: AR maintenance, part tracking, sensor streams.
- Validate radio coverage, latency, scheduling.
- Incremental expansion
- Extend RAN coverage, edge compute nodes, connect more cells, integrate more devices.
- Full coverage & cutover
- Replace or augment Wi-Fi or wired links across all relevant zones.
- Begin production use of mission-critical flows over 5G.
- Performance tuning
- Run stress tests, fine-tune QoS parameters, adjust slices and priorities.
- Monitor for anomalies and feedback into configuration.
- Scaling & replication
- Use lessons learned to replicate the setup at the Toulouse site.
- Apply same architecture across future plants using templates and automation.
Implications & Learnings for Industrial 5G Adoption
The two European plants serve as valuable technical references:
- Private 5G can replace traditional wired and Wi-Fi links in demanding industrial settings, enabling mobility, low latency, and robust control.
- Automation, modular architecture, and API-driven interfaces speed up deployment and align with factory IT landscapes.
- Factories must plan for RF complexity early — metal interiors, moving machinery, interference zones — using simulation and field measurement.
- The architecture must be flexible for future growth, newer use cases (e.g. 6G, NTN integration), and evolving analytics demands.
- Security, device interoperability, and seamless integration into legacy systems remain major engineering tasks.
About RantCell
RantCell is a mobile network testing and monitoring platform that enables users to measure 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G network performance directly through smartphones. It supports automated testing, live dashboards, and remote analysis—without the need for complex hardware setups. Also read similar articles from here.
