The starting signal for one of the most important projects of our research team was officially given on Tuesday, 08.10.2019. In a double role – more on this below – we are part of the first Austrian test laboratory for use cases around the new fifth generation mobile network – 5G.

The organizers and participants agree: The event was a great success. More than 150 participants from business, science and politics listened to the top-class lectures and the following panel discussion. Research group leader Helmut Wöllik was part of that discussion due to his extensive knowledge of the technological aspects of 5G and the corresponding use cases. In addition, Gaby Schaunig, deputy governor of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, and A1 CEO Marcus Grausam were among the participants.

In fact, the first part of the dual role of our research group mentioned at the beginning consists of coordinating the development of the entire 5G infrastructure and its operation on site. This is done in close cooperation and continuous coordination with A1. This requires, in addition to knowledge of the mobile technologies used, above all network technology skills. The unique selling point of the 5G Playground Carinthia is the possibility to process data for the use cases in the immediate vicinity of the end devices. This means that measured values and video streams do not have to be sent halfway around the globe before they can be evaluated, but are processed directly in data centres in Lakeside Park. This leads to a massive reduction in latency and improved performance.

Furthermore – as the second part of the dual role – our research group is responsible for one of the four use cases: Smart City. Here, we are concerned with energy-efficient sensors, energy-efficient communication via the 5G network and intelligent and meaningful evaluation of the generated data. The aim is to make people’s lives more pleasant and the environment more liveable. This is done by evaluating data on traffic, temperature, air quality, noise, brightness and much more. 5G is an important part of this, as it is the only way to equip thousands of sensors with mobile radio modules and operate them simultaneously in the smallest of spaces.

As can be seen in the photo gallery below, the media coverage was consistently positive. We are already looking forward to the further progress in Playground.

This post is also available in: Deutsch (German)