Ultra-Scalable Wireless Access (USWA) is a project researching the NR+ (New Radio) technology of local, private mesh networking for industrial facilities. The NR+ is the other, less known than the commonly used 3GPP, technology compliant with ITU (International Telecommunications Union) specifications for 5G. Its suitability for solving the off-highway vehicles machine control connectivity challenges is very promising and it just might be the next cutting-edge technology of SATEL.
The management of off-highway vehicles, such as machines for agriculture, construction sites and the mining industry, is developing towards remote control and autonomous operation. Current network solutions cannot meet the higher data and latency requirements brought by this development. The NR+ network technology is being investigated as a potential candidate, and SATEL is interested in the implementation of the technology to off-highway vehicle use cases.
The NR+ technology, standardized in ETSI and compliant with the DECT2020, is based on a wireless mesh network architecture which enables large scale local networking by relaying data between different devices as well as direct connectivity between different devices.
Private mesh network suitable for harsh conditions
The connectivity challenges of the machine control of off-highway vehicles are manifold and they are related to developing autonomy and different applications. For example, data transfer between machines, such as the collision avoidance protocol, and data transfer related to the construction process, such as the transmission of truck location information.
The NR+ technology would fit well into SATEL’s portfolio, as it is a private mesh network suitable for harsh conditions, which is not attached to a base station but is built through connectivity nodes.
“We are investigating whether this technology allows off-highway vehicles to talk to each other on the same private network and transfer data from vehicle to vehicle on a construction site. Public mobile phone networks are not available everywhere. We are interested in whether this technology could be used to build site networks in such places”, state Head of Technology Heikki Keränen and Director of Product Development Jussi Savolainen.
As a result of the successful research project, the NR+ protocol seems viable, and as part of SATEL’s participation in the project, a Master of Science thesis was also done on its ability to solve the connectivity challenges of machine control of off-highway vehicles.
USWA was a three-year research project of CELTIC-NEXT. It was coordinated by Wirepas Ltd and included several partners from Finland and around Europe. CELTIC-NEXT stimulates and orchestrates international collaborative projects in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) domain.
Project consortium members from Finland, in addition to SATEL, were Wirepas,
Tampere University of Technology, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland,
Valmet Automation, Kone and Schaeffler.
Master of Science Thesis of Juho Pyykkönen:
How DECT-2020 solves off-highway vehicles machine control connectivity challenges