Ericsson Exhibitor Demo: Edge Computing and Private Cellular Networks for Smart Manufacturing (formally Cradlepoint)

Ericsson’s 5G-focused solutions turn connectivity into productivity by delivering intelligent communications at the edge that are more secure, versatile, and easier to manage than WiFi. See real-world business-critical use cases that exemplify how private 5G solutions accelerate operations, improve reliability, and enhance working conditions, all while reducing cost and latency.

Transcript:

00:00
Michael Dickens: My name's Michael Dickens. I'm with Ericsson Enterprise Solutions. Formally, you might have known us from Cradlepoint. We build everything 5G-focused. Our solutions are very much focused on from edge to core, and RAN. You might know us from the cell phones back in the day as Ericsson, but oftentimes many of you on your 5G phones today we'll be connecting to our public networks on Verizon, AT&T, things like that. Today, we're much more focused on radio solutions for private 5G, the edge devices, which I'll go into that for the hardware, but everything around 4G, 5G, networking; those communications, we really focus on building a managed network for communicating often in OT environments. I'll have a whole bunch of examples I'll go through to get your minds thinking about all the solutions you may be doing. But of course, how does that work with Inductive? I'll get into that as well.

00:51
Michael Dickens: First off, we focus on making sure all these items are completely managed from one location, NetCloud manager. You'll find this up in our cloud. We automatically register the devices for any private radios, core networking routers, and they're all 5G-enabled, focusing on those SIMs and getting connectivity for those. You'll see that we actually have a lot of layers and stacks on here. Every time I talk to someone from Inductive, they're like, "Okay, we need to talk MQTT, or we need an API, and we need to be able to run STKs." All these items are ran in the cloud and distributed automatically, organizationally, to each of the devices or the core RANs that we're running. You'll see on the bottom that one of the partnerships mainly we have in the networking world. We're talking about security and communications. We include all those pieces. But our focus on the 5G side is that intelligence for communication on those so that you can know your network is secure and running for your applications that you're running at the edge.

01:50
Michael Dickens: Some of the devices that we have, we'll start from the bottom and then we'll start moving up into the private 5G world. But the classic Cradlepoint point side, we have come out with a couple new products, one, R2100. This is an IoT/OT device that has included antennas. It has Bluetooth, it has Ethernet, it has Wi-Fi, but of course 5G communications; you can just drop a SIM in to it. The nice thing about this product, it includes all the antennas and everything into one IP67 device so that you can drop it in anywhere. We find this; we're running it outdoors. We're on lift trucks, we're on vehicles, things like that, that are mobile. Then the devices below, you'll see that are devices that can run Ignition. Anything that supports Docker containers will support Ignition. I'll show you how we actually distribute those here in a little bit. The 920 and S700, and IBR200: basically, you're going down the road, and you're getting different throughput for each of these devices. And it's important that you can run these on public networks, again, like Verizon, rest of the world, British Telecom, Vodafone, things like that, depending on where you're deploying these. Or you can put a private SIM into them. So, you can get communications to your devices at a local area, whether it's a manufacturer, a stadium, depending on where you're using those to get communications.

03:05
Michael Dickens: Some of the other devices that we have, we also find ourselves often into retail or quick-serve restaurants. For example, if you went over to a Starbucks this morning to get your coffee, you can have a Cradlepoint running there. Oftentimes we find we're doing not just communications for the internet for that, but we're running applications like Inductive Automation, Ignition, at the edge to manage door controls, interfaces for the fire alarm control panels, things like that. They like to run that application on a separate air-gapped network. They may use us for backup internet in the DMZ, but this is a nice place to be able to build those applications depending on where you're deploying in the world, whether it's a vehicle, a retail store, or if it's the closet for the MDF for where you're running your control systems for a building, etc.

03:50 
Michael Dickens: How do we deploy Ignition, for example? So, I have a few examples I want to talk to you about up here. First off are edge apps. What this is from our NetCloud manager, you're able to deploy Python code natively to any of our boxes at the edge. This makes it really easy for you to create an app, manage it, do what you need, very lightweight per code. Oftentimes we are running, for example, like MQTT Mosquitto at the edge, and you'll integrate with that. So you can talk MQTT to your standard things. This is a really easy way for any of our devices if you have an application running. Now, edge containers, we orchestrate this also from the cloud as well. Ignition actually keeps up to date all their devices and their software in their cloud so that we can just automate the point to one or thousands of devices at a time.

04:36 
Michael Dickens: This makes it really easy because we just do standard Docker Compose to be able to bring that out to the edge and be able to deploy your application. Then you can manage Ignition as you want from all the different devices. Now, HMI always comes up, and so through NetCloud manager, if you ever need like a VPN or just things like that to be built, you can do that or natively from NetCloud. You can pop in and do like VNC or RDP or SSH, whatever you need from the cloud to easily get to your applications or even to the container itself, running Ignition so you can manage that remotely. Whereas oftentimes we're not always on the plant for going and walking to every machine, we wanna be able to do it from our desk. This makes it really, really easy. We also have connectors into like AWS, Azure, all the standard platforms that we build those, so we can automate that connection into there for the connectivity.

05:23 
Michael Dickens: I know Ignition can do that as well. So it's just a basis of what applications you're running where. But what my biggest point is here, all the different interfaces and communications that we have built into these boxes to be able to do communication, those are available to the container. Now, that being said, great, networking's wonderful, but we do build security atop all this where you all hear about Zero Trust Network Access and things like that. Oftentimes, where the vendors coming in and we need that remote access, well, they can create that access for a very specifically... For example, I work with 7-Eleven, and they need access directly to the gas stations to update the firmware on the pumps themselves. Just that management piece. Well, we have a Cradlepoint there. They can create that access for you to get directly to that application only and make it really, really easy.

06:11 
Michael Dickens: Now, I wanted to introduce, this is a little bit newer concept for some people, but the same internet that you're using from your phone today, we create networks for that. There's a couple of different components that come into that. First off, there's a radio. Right? Oftentimes we think about Wi-Fi and radio. Everyone walks up to my table over there and be like, "Oh, we got a bunch of Wi-Fi here?" No, it's very focused on 4G/5G networking. That's where the Ericsson piece comes into play. We actually deploy networks from small to very, very large statewide networks for private networking. Private, when I say "private," I wanna be specific. This is for your applications. It's not like you're going to Verizon saying, "Hey, can I buy SIM and connect a bunch of devices?" This is for your specific applications controlled by you, just like you're deploying Wi-Fi in a location, but you can do a lot more with it and more security.

06:57 
Michael Dickens: A couple of the pieces that come with it. One, management. That's always important. We can do on-prem management or in the cloud; cloud makes it always easier. You'll need your radios; we have a very wide selection of different radios for different spectrums. When you go around the world, you'll see that... I have a little example later on where we're deploying, but you need Spectrum to be able to talk on. 5 GHz, 2.4 standard for Wi-Fi, we're looking from all the way down to 600 MHz up to millimeter wave for when we're deploying these. So, we have a whole bunch of different radios for these. Some are built to be outdoors, like when you're driving down the road, you see the tower, the three antennas. That's some of the things we do for outdoors deployment. But then we also have with something called "red dots." They're the indoor radios so that you can deploy into a factory floor, a warehouse, wherever you may be using it. We're able to deploy and broadcast 5G into those locations as well, depending on the Spectrum.

07:50 
Michael Dickens: If you're North-American-based, US, CBRS comes up quite a bit. It's a nice Spectrum FCC opened up for us to be able to use for these environments that you can use for your deployments as well. Last but not least, you need a core. I always talked about this is like the Wi-Fi controller, but it's the core for the 5G network: The brains, the communication, the control, where does my SIM get authenticated? This is all controlled here, so we include this as well. We also include SIMs with the devices so that you can pop them in there, or you can do eSIM to deliver to your devices as well, like using Intune or an MDM to Apple devices, Zebra scanners, things like that. We know there's a lot of communication. We do build routers and edge OT router devices. We know there's gonna be a whole bunch of other devices on our network as well, so we work with all of them as well. Very common.

08:42 
Michael Dickens: Now, some of the reasons that we're doing this is really often one specific application. When we walk into a customer, they need to have the communication up and running. Sometimes that's voice. We find that they need voice communication in a remote site. LMR is very common, but we'll start getting other communication. Time-critical, I mean, you can be driving 500 kilometers an hour and still be connected and jumping from RAN to RAN. So, it's really powerful, very fast. You're able to have that secure communication always. All the time I talk to someone, we're running our AGV; it's on Wi-Fi, it drops, we have to stop for safety reasons. We need that coverage and ubiquitous communication. That's where 5G really is able to answer that need.

09:24 
Michael Dickens: Also, low, low latency. Right? All our applications now are needed to be able to communicate in a very fast and quick manner for things to happen. Door controls, whatever it may be. Safety reasons: We're running into a lot of safety applications where these need to be very cool fast. We are down to like five, two milliseconds sometimes for these networks. And that's 5G terms. 4G, 40 milliseconds, 30 milliseconds. But it's really important for these to be able to talk quickly and things to be able to happen.

09:52 
Michael Dickens: Also, the local management and serviceability. A lot of our partners, I know some of you are partners, are deploying it here, and they are able to manage these devices, but we also have services to help manage 5G. 'Cause we know, 3GPP, that's the IEEE of the world for networking for us. It's very complex. We try to make it easy for you to deploy these. Now, some of the developers in the room, I know you're like, "Hey, the IT guys just bring my network. I don't have to worry about that," but we're here to help your IT guys. If you're just doing the developing part, no problem.

10:24 
Michael Dickens: Something new and interesting we've been doing on these 5G systems is indoor positioning. We can get down to one meter. So, let's say you have a 2 million-square-feet plant. Where is George? George is carrying an iPhone or a scanner from Zebra or a Google Android device. I need to know where George is right now because there's something going on. Boom. We can able to pull that up and have triangulation of knowing exactly where anything is. We're also running into some of our manufacturers for automobiles. They have actually smart torque wrenches. They're very expensive. They need them. They need a monitor. They're doing exact torquing that they need because it's for our safety's driving the vehicles that it's done correctly. Well, they're connecting that via 5G. Where is that wrench? We don't know. Someone moved it over here, somewhere. Well, we can track exactly where those things are as well. So, interesting to be able to start doing this tracking systems.

11:20 
Michael Dickens: Another interesting thing that we started seeing is that coverage for AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. You go into this big metal behemoth oil and gas or a factory. RF is just not working. My cell phone, I can't make a call, right? E911. I need to be able to put that out, or I need to be able to have information on what's going on. Well, at the exact same time as we're deploying the coverage for the... Sorry, the private 5G network, we can deploy coverage extension. So, you can take basically pump 5G network from Verizon into your entire plant floor so that you can make sure you have communications on both sides of the world. Now, we do some QoS and make sure your applications are working and everything like that. But this is kind of an add-on feature that you can make sure that you have coverage for the standard users that you have coming into your network.

12:09 
Michael Dickens: This has been really useful for some systems to be able to replace their DaaS, which is quite expensive, and be able to have communication. Now, we're doing this mostly on the indoor stuff because the macro networks, it's the carrier's job to cover the outdoors. But we do run into worlds where, for example, a mine. They're out in the middle of nowhere. They're going deep into the tunnels. They still want to have their cell phones. If it's just AT&T, for example, though the carrier's not gonna be able to connect you down that mine, but we can. We can run that signal down in there, and it's great for safety and communications. Sometimes I'm the middle of nowhere, I just wanna call my wife, and, well, I need service. Here we go. This is a good solution to be able to get that done.

12:54
Michael Dickens: So, I want to go through some use cases, kinda get your minds thinking here, and then in about 10 minutes we'll talk about that. So, from the list here, I won't read them all off. Some of the main ones I've been seeing for this where we could be deploying and doing communications for Inductive is oil and gas, mining, ports, utilities, warehouse logistics, and, of course, a lot, a lot of manufacturing. So, these are all really rough environments sometimes. You don't want to be taking a cable and moving it again. Power may be there, maybe not. This makes it easy. So, if someone walked up to me and the engineering manager said, "Hey, we need to move that development system that's manufacturing this 20 feet," they're like, "Well, all right, we gotta get the CAT6 guys over here, the fiber guys over here; it's gonna be a month; it's gonna cost this X amount of dollars operationally, blah, blah, blah." Well, I just put a 5G gateway there, put a SIM in it, boom, move it to 20 feet. I don't care. No problem, anytime.

13:48
Michael Dickens: I also find there's a lot of third-party applications. One of them being kiosks where they get hard hats. You forgot your gear today. They have to go to the kiosk. Well, they don't want them on their network; they just give them a 5G SIM, segment it off, and say, "There you go. You can drop in to your kiosk anywhere;" you may be able to go. These are common use cases across all these type of segments. But we actually go down to the nitty-gritty specific applications as well. But the network is the network, comms or comms. Nothing's gonna work without communication and be able to make that work.

14:21
Michael Dickens: We are seeing this, like I said, globally start to deploy. This might be a little small for you guys to see up there, but there is a whole bunch of examples up here of what solutions that we can talk about. You can take a look online that you can get case studies on there and see why they deployed it and what's going on for each of these. I have a few examples I'm gonna go through. I just want you guys to know that this is a technology that's ubiquitous across the whole earth. Right? We were deploying in all kinds of different locations. It can be tough to deploy in those locations, but Spectrum and RF, 3GPP, 5G networking is a great solution to be able to do this. I do run into scenarios where we're doing both, right? We have 5G doing the deployment, then you gotta go farther to the next site. Okay, you do point-to-point microwave; that's great.

15:08
Michael Dickens: And then from the edge devices, we redistribute again, like say LoRaWAN, for example. So, you start seeing how these networks start stacking and then give you your application to have communications as needed. Right? Often I do cover miles in They were like, "Oh, can we put a 4K camera right there?" and LoRaWAN could do that, but the throughput is not there, right? They were like, "Oh, can we put a 4K camera right there?" I'm like, "Sure, no problem." 5G, we absolutely can do that. LoRa, mm, I'm not sure how you're gonna get all that video across there. But that couple sensors around it, absolutely; we could totally do that. And the solution come all together across from our gateways to the RAN to the network, to the core, to the whole communication and the data center.

15:48
Michael Dickens: First example I wanna talk about is Toyota Material Handling. So, they were actually having a lot of issues with Wi-Fi, simple as that. They were going outdoors, getting pallets, deploying this stuff, getting parts, and they're using it for their own solutions. And they build these actual lifting machines themselves, actually. And they were having a lot of issues operationally for it. Just be able to go out there, and what pallet am I supposed to be grabbing? I can't scan it; it's not working. And so issues would start backing up, and we all know how manufacturing works in that world. Time is money. Their ROI was within, I think it was a month or two months that they got their ROI on this because their operational efficiency went through the roof for this. So, really interesting solutions for this, and it really helps...

16:34
Michael Dickens: One of our partners actually helped deploy this, and their productivity went really well. They're very, very happy. Now, the cool part is, though, now that they have this network, they're starting to look at other things that can move to this. I always, every time someone comes to me, they're like, "We want a 5G network." Well, "Is Wi-Fi not cutting it for you?" And they're like, "No." This is why, why, why. And so there's that one application that gets them into the door that makes them happy, but then you can start deploying other things and then just network. 'Cause there's space; there's bandwidth for you to be able to use.

17:08
Michael Dickens: Another one in manufacturing. They were actually looking at doing different radios, and they really just needed coverage. They have a whole bunch of different users on cell phone. They pay the carrier for their service. And of course, through all the metal in this building, they were not able to get connectivity. So, we're able to expand this using our coverage extension. They actually just deployed mainly the coverage extension. Then they moved to the Ericsson private 5G side because they saw the value of it, and they'd be able to have communications for those applications. But just walking into a building and not having service is just, doesn't work well for getting anything done. And so, we really solved this solution. It's just, I look at it as a complete bonus add, but I'm starting to discover that I thought private 5G is what everyone's gonna want. No, they just want coverage. They just want their cell phone to work. And so we're running into this quite a bit. It's really interesting for their communications. And then they started looking at doing AGVs, things like that for the communication on each of those things that are moving around so they can do new solutions 'cause they have the network to be able to get that done.

18:16
Michael Dickens: Another one, a logistics solution. More AGVs and AMRs. We're starting to see that. AI, communication automation, we're seeing that grow. You're not able to get that done without having the communication to be able to have those vehicles moving. The biggest piece I see until most of these are safety. They have these devices, pallet movers, what's going on, and they wanna make sure they have the communication to make sure what's going on. I was actually talking to one that was doing... Let's see. It was the largest retailer, if you will, the big W. They had their big, big things where they had pallets on multiple layers, moving these boxes automated so they could start doing... They were running that on Wi-Fi as well. They would stop. They're going 40 miles an hour, they lost connectivity, they were not able to run anymore. So, they would just stop. But you know where they stopped? Where there's no signal. So, they had to walk over to the machine, put it in neutral, move it over to the system to where they had communications, and get it started again. Private 5G fixed that for them because they were able to get communication across all of it and get all the other systems that are delivering and automating for all these pieces. It's really interesting to be able to have comms to be able to make it work.

19:31
Michael Dickens: Another manufacturer, this one's very focused in the EV charging space. So, they need to be able to have comms for the chargers themselves. And so sometimes you walk in these places, and they have 30 chargers in a lot. But are they gonna run fiber underneath the concrete for each of those solutions for those there? No, it gets very costly. And so they're able to get Cradlepoint routers connected into those machines and have all the chargers working and communicating and having that. I even have some that are doing it out in the parking lot for electric vehicles getting... They're all sending and manufactured, waiting to be shipped out, but then they have updates. And so we drop in a tower in the middle of the parking lot that starts sending all the updates to the cars for the communication. So, we're starting to see EV start to grow in that type of world for just the cars' communication, but the manufacturing process, but then also for anything else that they may have ancillary for in the field out in the middle of nowhere. You know, I'm driving to Texas from here. Well, I need to stop at the EV place. Well, they need to have all of that communicating. And so private 5G. Honestly, mostly private 4G in those scenarios, but both work in those solutions.

20:44
Michael Dickens: This one may be a little more common for you guys, but we're starting to see Newmont, for example, mining solutions that they're in these really tough locations. This one's more big earth movers digging down into the ground and getting materials. If you build solutions for this, you'll know that it's not a great location. It's dusty; it's dirty. It has to be very tough. We were able to deploy this tower, for example. It looks very similar to the ones if you see them outside. We do exact same thing as a macro radios to connect all the devices in these giant, giant, large areas. We're able to get the coverage communication working for all these things and even run 4K cameras getting machine vision from all the different things that they're doing.

21:25
Michael Dickens: I have another one I didn't put on here, but it's a gold mine that they're running that they had the big earth movers. They make about 300K an hour for those earth movers for the giant dump trucks, like big as this room, driving. They actually installed our routers, four of them, while it's moving because the cost of having downtime. And their goal was to move to a full autonomous vehicle so that the drivers, they don't have to jump on and off while it's running; they'll just run by themselves. That's the goal. And so they'll be able to have a network that can do those comms. And people remotely come in, for example, tough turns, whatever may be going on, they can do that over the network, which is a really interesting solution, and start optimizing for those things and having communication.

22:14
Michael Dickens: Now, oil and gas. We're starting to see this grow quite a bit as well. Now, oil and gas can mean a lot of different things. I see the stations out in the middle of the ocean. We're starting to deploy for those communications. A lot of times it's satellite backhaul or point-to-point if it's close enough to shore. But then we redistribute that with 5G for all the comms on the oil rig itself for communicating. 'Cause it's pure metal. So, we have to turn up the power a bit on these to be able to get the communication going in for the RF. But having that versus having just Wi-Fi, and the amount of APs, and where would they put them, this makes it very simple 'cause we can deploy four radios on each of the side, bring it in, or define if it's really tall or down. We can point those radios as we need via antennas. Just to put Wi-Fi APs across this whole entire thing, I don't know how I would even design it because you have to be doing it for years to know every single area, what you need to communicate with, how it's gonna work. We make it very simple 'cause we did it with four radios. Makes it super easy.

23:13
Michael Dickens: Now, then when we talk about oil and gas on land, it's usually very, very distributed. And so that's another good point. So, I do, in my designs, I'll do point-to-point and then redistribute via 5G for those different areas for those communication. If you're able to get fiber, wonderful, that's great. But most of the time those environments we're not able to have the communication. But of course if you guys know, all the applications there locally that you want to have that access to, no one wants to drive the three hours out to that one rig to be able to make sure that it's working correctly or you lost connectivity. This makes it a lot easier to have that comms up and running.

23:51
Michael Dickens: Now, those are my slides. I wanted to leave five minutes for any questions that may be out there. Yeah, it's our own SIMs. It's your SIM; it's your network. You do have to pay for the radio, the core network, the services that get it out there. But no, you're not paying the carriers for that. That's your own network. Now, the only other thing may be Spectrum. I would recommend CBRS here, or you may have to go through a third party; even maybe Verizon might lease you use in Spectrum, depending on your needs.

24:19
Michael Dickens: If it's private 5G, for example, with CBRS, you don't have to pay anything. There are paid-for licenses to get priority access on that Spectrum. But if you're in the middle of nowhere, probably no one's using it. Your land, it's free.

24:35
Michael Dickens: Yes and no. It does cost quite a bit more than Wi-Fi 'cause the radio is more expensive, but I can cover a lot more space. So, it comes down to your applications, right? Then, of course, your devices need to have 5G or 4G radios in them too.

24:52
Michael Dickens: I always look at it as a hybrid solution. If you're using Wi-Fi today and then your apps are running okay on it, I'm not gonna push you to go to 5G. But if you have applications we're not working that well on it, I'll say, "Okay, let's start implementing it and do a hybrid solution," absolutely. Now, if you were talking, I only had a thousand devices, and it's this large area I had to deploy a thousand APs 'cause it's such a large area, we may be able to make that a lot easier for a transition to 5G. It really depends.

25:18
Audience Member 5: You mentioned IP67, but do you also have, like, C1D1 hazardous parts?

25:24
Michael Dickens: We do on some of the routers. It depends. There's a lot of different specs out there on the devices we do. The radios as well. It depends on what type of environment you're going into. We do have that on all our spec sheets, stuff like that. But for the hazardous or electrical areas, things like that, we do have some of those specs, yes.

25:45
Michael Dickens: Wonderful. If you have any more... Wanna talk more about this, we'll be right there at the booth. If you have any questions, please come out to us. Thank you.