On the occasion of the 2023 World Telecommunication and Social Information Day, China Unicom joined hands with partners such as Great Wall Seiko, Huawei, and BA to promote the further deep integration of 5G-A and the OT network of automotive manufacturing production lines. The four major breakthroughs of 5G in the field of industrial control have been realized: first, cross-layer collaboration between communication network protocol and industrial protocol, realizing the interaction and cross-layer collaboration between 5G-A communication protocol and industrial network protocol; The second is to launch the first industrial module integrating 5G-A URLLC characteristics, freeing the industrial ecological control of foreign leading enterprises; Third, the industrial control components with 5G-A communication capability were developed for the first time, and more than 30 industrial terminals were successfully implanted with 5G-A core molds. Fourth, the 5G-A core network is transferred from the equipment manufacturer's laboratory to the telecom operator's toB regional machine room. In addition, the industrial control business with the capability of 5G-A URLLC will be extended from the welding production line to the assembly production line, and the RT (real-time) /NRT (non-real-time) business will be carried on the network, and the application scenario of 5G-A technology in the core production link of automobile manufacturing will be further expanded and enriched. China Unicom united with industrial partners to build the core ecosystem of the industry, form a close ecological cooperation relationship in the OT field of the automobile manufacturing industry, and initially build the 5G+ industrial control industry chain of the automobile industry. Successfully incubated the first industrial module that supports 5G-A URLLC features. The module supports the integration of industrial protocols over 5G, and supports openCPU RTOS to achieve the leapfrog upgrade of 5G-A terminals and achieve the breakthrough of terminal ecology from 0 to 1. At present, in the Great Wall Seiko 5G-A flexible trial production line, the 5G-A URLLC industrial module has been embedded in the IO equipment, valve island and other industrial control units of the production line, and the wireless transformation of the industrial control equipment of the production line has been realized in a real sense, so that the mechanical grip of the production line is free from the "shackle" of the network cable.

In the field of intelligent manufacturing, the URLLC enhancement provided by 5G-A as mentioned above has realized the support of 5G network for extremely low delay industrial control services, and promoted the application of 5G-A URLLC to the C2IO scenario at the production line level, providing A construction example for 5G factories. In addition, 5G-A also has passive iot, communication perception integration and high-precision positioning capabilities. Among them, the whole industrial chain of 5G-A passive iot is accelerating, creating A full-scene connection base to help the construction of "5G factory"; Communication Awareness One will provide connectivity beyond traditional connectivity. With the acceleration of the maturity of the 5G-A industrial chain and the gradual clarity of the business scene, the accelerated integration of manufacturers will bring 5G-A into reality, which will bring new breakthroughs and progress to the mobile network, and bring more possibilities to the future smart life and digital economy.
China Unicom, Great Wall Seiko and Huawei will continue to work with OT partners to deepen 5G-A innovation exploration with URLLC technology as the anchor point, incubate more productive line applications, accelerate the end-to-end commercial process of 5G-A, provide more and better high-value services for automotive manufacturing and other industries, and effectively promote the digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading of manufacturing. Digitalization, networking and intelligentization will help Chinese modernization.

Excerpted from: C114 communication network