5G is becoming a fundamental part of the communications infrastructure for connected industries and needs to be integrated into the digital twin to improve development, operation and maintenance\u2013that’s a call from the 5G ACIA. It is committed to the use of 5G in industrial applications and has published a white paper on the subject.<\/strong><\/p>\n In connection with the factory of the future, the term “digital twin” comes up again and again. As a bridge between the real world and that of bits and bytes, it provides relevant information of an object and thus enables, for example, simulations and an overarching exchange of data in a factory. Such a collection of data, properties and models now applies not only to production equipment and physical objects, but also to communications networks such as 5G and intangible entities and situations – such as mobile network configuration and performance reporting.<\/p>\n “The benefits of a digital representation for the integration of 5G into Industrie 4.0 are enormous. That’s why we concluded that it makes sense to also formulate the cellular system deployed in factories as a digital twin to understand a cellular network as a fundamental information backbone,” says Josef Eichinger, head of 5G cellular system design at Huawei’s European standardization and industrial development department.<\/p>\n For example, before a planned change, a digital twin can provide helpful information about how a transmit\/receive situation will look specifically after an adjustment to production lines. As a result, this knowledge helps to efficiently restore an optimal state. Since several options are usually possible to achieve the desired communication quality, from beam delivery to the position of the transmitter, the digital twin saves time-consuming trial and error and quickly provides the right measure via the results of a simulation.<\/p>\n The data basis for such simulations comes from the Asset Administration Shell and, in particular, KPI monitoring, which looks back at past events and performance values. They form a model that can be used for a machine learning algorithm that predicts what would happen as a result of a change. Consequences of actions thus become transparent before they are implemented.<\/p>\nAsset Administration Shell as data basis<\/h2>\n