Private 5G network

A whole new digital infrastructure for industrial transformation

Private 5G networks are nonpublic mobile networks built to meet an organization's specific needs. It is technically the same as a public 5G network due to the compliance with 3GPP R15 and the subsequent standards. In the era of 2/3/4G, the private mobile network was mainly used in the field of railway, public security, etc. It can hardly meet the diverse needs of industrial customers due to the restrictions such as the limited network capacity, expensive fee for equipment investment, long construction duration, and high complexity in operation and maintenance. However, the private mobile network empowered by the 5G technology has the advantages in high throughput, low latency, and massive machine-type communications. Private 5G has been designed to meet the diverse needs of the vertical industry from the beginning. Private 5G makes full use of advanced technologies, such as network slicing, edge computing, 5G LAN, etc., enabling the well meeting of a series of requirements from the vertical industry, such as high uplink speed, large connection capacity, low latency, agile network building, and local data processing. There is no doubt that Private 5G networks will act as the crucial infrastructure enabling the digital and intelligent transformation of the vertical industry.

In the overseas market, Amazon Web Services has launched its Amazon Private 5G service yet. With this new service, enterprise customers can easily set up, deploy, operate, and expand private mobile network. Amazon Web Services provides the service package including the hardware and software of 5G and/or 4G network that can be subscribed through the Amazon Web Services portal by the customers.

Combination of 5G and MEC*

AILINK collaborates with Amazon Web Services to build the end-to-end Private 5G network

It is a significant development trend for industry that cloud computing goes with Private 5G network. Amazon Web Services provides one-stop solution to meet computing demands ranging from the data center to the edge node with the 'Region + Edge' architecture where the connectivity provided by Private 5G network is available. It helps the enterprise customers reduce learning costs, accelerate business innovation, make full use of production data, and realize business value.

In China, Amazon Web Services has been committing to the collaboration with local partners to support native business. Taking advantage of its partners, Amazon Web Services has jointly built up a 'cloud computing + Private 5G network' solution to provide a basis for the digital transformation of users in vertical industries. Through cooperation with the AILINK, Amazon Web Services can jointly leverage the advantages of 5G technology, cloud computing and edge computing to enable the one -box service experience to its end users.

As the innovative digital infrastructure service provider, AILINK concentrates on the well convergence of 5G edge intelligence and OICT* technology in industrial scenarios by offering the end-to-end Private 5G network apparatus, lightweight industrial edge intelligence centers with the built-in application management capability to meet industrial customers’ needs of one-stop, low-cost and service-oriented solutions. AILINK has served the customers across diverse fields including warehousing, building materials manufacturing, energy, manufacturing, media, etc. Both Amazon Web Services and AILINK believe Private 5G network will be strongly empowered by mobile edge computing, so as to serve all kinds of demand on sites, for example uninterrupted AGV control, flexible manufacturing, high-definition quality inspection, and electrical safety fence.

CEO of AILINK, Mr. Ding mentioned, ‘the cooperation between AILINK and Amazon Web Services will accelerate the moving of industrial enterprises business to the cloud, promote the integration of IT and OT of factory, help customers create the synergy of cloud, network, edge and terminal, improve the digital level of infrastructure in factory, and bring innovative and intelligent experience.’

Advantages of the integrated solution

AILINK Private 5G network based on Amazon Web Services cloud

• Support diversedemands on sites in factory

The solution integrating the AILINK and Amazon Web Services capabilities brings the all-in-one service, including 5G connectivity, computer vision application, AI algorithm and machine learning application. Through unified deployment, vertical industry customers can easily realize full connection within factory, flexible manufacturing, AGV cluster deployment and control, industrial quality inspection, predictive maintenance, and other scenarios.

• Cost-effective TCO model

The joint solution by AILINK and Amazon Web Services provides a simplified deployment experience and significantly reduces the maintenance cost. With the power of Amazon's cloud elastic computing resources, as well as a 5G private network’s capability in delivering multiple services in single network, the full awareness of production lines at a cost-effective budget and the synergy of central cloud and edge computing are enabled.

• Superior IOT connectivity performance

With strong computing engine, the joint solution by AILINK and Amazon Web Services guarantees the performance of connectivity for IIOT*, such as s uplink throughput exceeding 300Mbp, packet loss below 0.01%, radio link latency reaching 15ms@99.999% etc.

• High availability

The control plane of 5G Core deployed in Amazon Web Services cloud benefits from the enterprise level SLA offered by Amazon Web Services in terms of the improved availability of 5G connectivity service enabled by the cross-region service migration. It ensures the continuous enterprise business operation relying on Private 5G network.

• Perfect network security

The safety system and data privacy mechanism on Amazon Web Services protects the security of end customers. For example, when using service with Snowball Edge, customers can not only achieve physical isolation from the external network through exclusive 5G network devices, but also rely on the strong encryption capabilities provided by Amazon Snowball Edge to automatically encrypt all data transmitted to Snowball using the 256-bit encryption key hosted by Amazon Key Management Service (KMS). As the encryption key will never be allowed to store on the device, it completely ensures the security of user data during transmission.

• Manageable delivery process

The joint solution by AILINK and Amazon Web Services adopts all-in-one delivery mode. With Amazon CloudFormation and the standardized templates, the customers can configure software systems, preset cloud resources, and realize agile deployment. With the deployment practice, it can be shortened to less than one week for deployment imposing little impact on production and operation and helps customers of vertical industries accelerate the digital intelligent transformation.

Typical references of AILINK 5G

• Private 5G + AGVlogistics for assembly line

Customers can deploy the full set of 5G Core functionalities including the control plane and the user plane, on Amazon Snowball Edge to build Private 5G network that is solely available in factories or workshops. The Pico 5G AP is adopted for indoor coverage, endowing the wireless link to the AGV. The data collected from AGV can be processed on the Amazon Snowball Edge for the data analytics requiring the real-time response and the data isolation inside the campus.

• Private 5G + data collection on sites in factory

In the process of digital intelligence transformation, a lot of enterprise customers have encountered difficulties in data connection. They couldn’t grasp the production dynamics in real time. They are frustrated by the constant lagging or erroneous information on paper record. It seems hardly to realize the panoramic control and adaptive adjustment based on operational data. The joint solution by AILINK and Amazon Web Services enables customers with full connectivity, entire data collection, visual unified operation and maintenance, data driven insight through wireless data acquisition, and real-time cloud analysis capabilities.

• Private 5G + quality inspection with computer vision

The joint solution by AILINK and Amazon Web Services makes full use of the advantages of high uplink throughput, low latency, and high reliability. It achieves the computing power for quality inspection on the edge and centralized deployment on the central cloud. It helps reduce the cost of the overall computing power deployment of enterprises, while increase production and operational efficiency. With the help of Private 5G network, manufacturer may perform the flexible manufacturing via dynamically adjusting the configuration according to market needs.

Looking forward to the future, AILINK plans to conduct more in-depth cooperation with Amazon Web Services in various fields, provide comprehensive service capabilities for edge computing, integrate Amazon Web Services' machine learning innovation in the business, and provide broader AI options through cloud-based machine learning. In terms of business, AILINK will also cooperate with Amazon Web Services marketplace for convenient purchasing processes and flexible payment methods, and help industrial customers quickly practice safe and stable 5G and AIoT towards industry 4.0.

Abbreviation

MEC: Mobile Edge Computing

OICT: The convergence of three technologies including OT, IT and CT

IIOT: Industrial Internet of Things