The 5G-AMC2 project
5G-AMC2 was funded under the UK Government’s 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme (5GTT) delivered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which now sits within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The 5GTT programme explored and developed new use cases and 5G technical capabilities. 5G-AMC2 was the only project in the programme focused on the construction sector.
BAM Nuttall (with BRE and AttoCore) lead the 5G-AMC2 (Accelerate, Maximise and Create for Construction) project. 5G-AMC2 has delivered the first deployment of a 5G network on a major operational UK construction site.
At each site, three masts with 5G radios were connected by fibre optic cables to a comms room, providing complete coverage of each respective site. The 5G networks have been specifically designed to be temporary and portable, to meet the needs of construction sites. These private, standalone 5G networks are an extension of the BAMIT network.
5G-AMC2 has deployed private stand-alone 5G networks on the n77 band in two separate locations:
- The BAM Nuttall regional office in Kilsyth housing offices, plant yard, workshops, and materials laboratory.
- A construction site in Upper Kergord, Shetland. The remote site is a tough proving ground for new technology. Along with the challenging logistics of working in such a remote location, the quickly changeable and extreme weather conditions are a major test of the robustness of a new technology.
Network architecture
At each site, three masts with 5G radios were connected by fibre optic cables to a comms room, providing complete coverage of each respective site. The 5G networks have been specifically designed to be temporary and portable, to mete the needs of construction sites. These private, standalone 5G networks are an extension of the BAMIT network.
The networks have their own separate cores and operate as ‘Stand Alone’ R16 5G eco-systems.
- The Attocore core is hosted in HP D360 based Hypervisor VMs as is Accellerans’s CU (Control Unit), whilst the Effnet DUs (Distributed Unit) are on bare metal Dell R630s.
- Three Benetel 650 radios are co-located at each site making this a purely Edge routed stack, management is using in band and out of band access using Observium. The radios use low loss feeder to connect to Alpha Wireless AW3825 Pseudo-Omni directional antennas, which are mounted on portable telescopic 12m masts.
- With a spectrum of 40Ghz and Spectral Efficiency of 7.5Bps/Hz, and 2 x 2 MIMO, a maximum of 300Mbps UL/DL aggregate could be achieved.
- The design, deployment, testing and access control through a managed head end to all resources were all delivered and are currently managed by Impleo Professional Services.
5G-AMC2 succeeded in deploying the private 5G networks with the performance of the network coverage becoming stronger and more reliable as project work continued. A number of exemplar digital technologies were deployed on the 5G networks