A research project as an open 5G Living Lab
Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMDV), the 5G Living Lab pursues the research and lively presentation of practical needs and possible applications of 5G as a key technology in the context of a smart region/smart city. The project is funded under the BMDV's 5G Innovation Program with the aim of establishing Germany as a lead market for 5G applications.
To this end, an open, cross-sectoral Living Laboratory and showcase for stakeholders from business, science, administration and politics as well as for citizens and society will be established and linked with regional platforms and test fields. This is intended to ensure that results are transferred to economic and regional value chains and that solutions are scaled up. In addition, sustainable impulses on topics in the field of digitalization and automation are to be set and taken up via an advisory project board and the 5G-Forum.
The 5G Living Lab uses the local strengths of the mobility region and is divided into two modules: In the Braunschweig module, the focus is on research and transformation; in the Wolfsburg module, on application and operation. Testing is taking place in a total of 12 sub-projects within the application fields of mobility (road, rail, air), eHealth and Smart Construction, as well as technology-oriented cross-sectional activities.
The research results are to be integrated into the existing Living Labs and test field activities such as the Application Platform for Intelligent Mobility (AIM), the Test Bed Lower Saxony or #WolfsburgDigital and thus made permanently available. The applications will be designed to be scalable and developed and demonstrated in parallel with the 5G network rollout, so that the migration and implementation of results in practice will be straigthforward. By synchronizing research projects and expanding the digital infrastructure, the 5G Living Lab will also contribute to sustainable regional development and value creation.
Public 5G infrastructure in the Braunschweig-Wolfsburg project area
The implementation, deployment, demonstration and evaluation of the practice-oriented, partly experimental use cases, will take place in public 5G mobile networks that are being rolled out in the project region as part of regular network planning. In the implementation planning of the use cases, a close synchronization with mobile network operators will take place, so that current releases and further 5G technology modules such as "multi-access edge computing" can be taken into account. The two implementation partners, the city of Braunschweig and the city of Wolfsburg, play a key role by providing infrastructure and data to the project. Other stakeholders are involved via the 5G Forum collaboration platform.
All in all, a 5G Living Lab is being created in which public 5G infrastructure will be integrated into research infrastructures and municipal infrastructures and made available to a broad circle of experts from science, industry and administration.
Project facts
The funding volume is about EUR 12 million for the five consortium partners. The grant certificate was handed over to the consortium by the Federal Minister of Transport, Andreas Scheuer, on 05.12.2019. The project will run for three and a half years until June 30, 2023. The consortium includes the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (FHIIS), the Institute for Automation and Communication (ifak), the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Technische Universität Braunschweig (TUBS).
