Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems
Abstract view on elevated highway, speeding concept.
© WONG SZE FEI / Fotolia

© WONG SZE FEI / Fotolia

5G Playground

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The 5G Playground is an open testbed designed to enable innovative product prototyping in a realistic, comprehensive 5G end-to-end environment, including calibration, benchmarking and interoperability tests between new prototypes and products.

For this purpose, the testbed infrastructure can be flexibly augmented by infrastructure, software network functions and service components from third parties. For the end-to-end deployment, 5G Playground offers multiple slice templates as well as additional features to be deployed at use case premises (when the use case has to be located in a specific place such as factory shop floors).

An Overview of the components of the 5G Playground at Fraunhofer FOKUS
© Fraunhofer FOKUS

The FOKUS 5G Playground provides heterogeneous radio access technologies in an indoor- and outdoor test field.

Having been granted experimental licenses for 5G radio spectrum, the 5G Playground offers outdoor radio coverage of the Berlin city around the FOKUS campus. By combining 5G, 4G, WiFi, and LoRa WAN access technologies, the 5G Playgrounds allows to validate in an outdoor environment experiments previously only feasible in laboratories. As such, the playground allows for creating dedicated, specialized networks via “slicing” as required for general high-reliable networks, automotive verticals, as well as for networks for security and safety use cases.

As specific customized connectivity sites, the 5G Playground includes:

  • an indoor and outdoor wireless access environment around Fraunhofer FOKUS
  • support of ultra reliable, low latency communication for factory shop floors – deployed in the Industria IoT lab of FOKUS (can be replicated at factory premises)
  • an automotive testbed environment, which extends a complete underground parking floor in the FOKUS building (can be replicated indoor or outdoor at customer premises)
  • coverage of dense urban areas, for example via lampposts providing network access
  • a portable 5G edge node, which can be deployed on demand at remote locations.

Behind the Scenes

Upgrading our private 5G campus network in autumn 2020

Set up of the 5G campus network at Fraunhofer FOKUS
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
Buzzing with activity: Upgrading our private 5G campus network in Berlin
The components of the 5G campus network are connected at the server romm of Fraunhofer FOKUS
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
More computing and storage capacities. New switches!
5G router parking garage Fraunhofer FOKUS
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
Small cells provide 5G coverage down to the parking garage
Antennas for local campus network at Fraunhofer FOKUS are installed with a crane on the roof
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
Antennas for local campus networks (3700 - 3800 MHz) and 700 MHz head for the sky
set up of the campus network on the roof of Fraunhofer FOKUS
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
Final assembly of the set up of the campus network on the roof of Fraunhofer FOKUS
Components of the 5G campus network at the roof of Fraunhofer FOKUS
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
The final setup at the roof of Fraunhofer FOKUS
Setup in the 5G Lab of Fraunhofer FOKUS to demonstrate the Open5GCore software
© Valeria Mitelman / Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
The key component is invisible: Our Open5GCore software controls the communication within the network (archive photo).
A Baxter robot in the IIoT lab at Fraunhofer FOKUS to test 5G use cases and network components
© Stefan Zeitz / Fraunhofer FOKUS
We are now excellently prepared to test 5G use cases and network components from different vendors.

Our Offer

Fraunhofer FOKUS offers using the 5G Playground for joint research & development projects. For example, FOKUS to partners:

  • the evaluation of innovative 5G network components and services in an indoor and outdoor environment
  • Optimization of products, i.e. performance assessments and interoperability tests
  • Proof-of-concept studies
  • Evaluation of 4G to 5G migration scenarios
  • Courses on 5G technologies and roadmap planning and support for migration scenarios
  • Planning and installation support of remote testbeds at your premises

5G Playground Empowering 5G Berlin

A map with 4 different institutes and buildings in Berlin that are connected via optical fiber network: Fraunhofer FOKUS, Fraunhofer HHI, Zentrales Rechenzentrum TU Berlin, Telekom Innovation Laboratories
© Fraunhofer FOKUS
5G Playground enables 5G Berlin

The 5G Playground empowers the 5G Berlin testbed, which comprises of two locations: the Fraunhofer FOKUS campus with its 5G Playground and the TU Berlin campus including the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute.

Specifically, for the environment, the 5G Playground is offering a ready-to-use end-to-end comprehensive 5G environment, including application enablers and support for multi-slicing addressing the complete requirements of the vertical use cases.

Videos about our 5G campus network

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Privacy warning

With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Privacy warning

With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacy

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