AT&T said it had successfully completed its first milestone toward proving the capabilities of its 5G network solution to enable “smart warehouse” applications for the Department of Defense’s Naval Base Coronado in San Diego.
In a statement, the carrier said its 5G network solution demonstrated data throughput speeds greater than 4 Gbps with less than 10 milliseconds of latency using AT&T 5G spectrum and a private 5G core and Radio Access Network (RAN). This performance was demonstrated with commercially available commodity mobile devices at a testbed facility in Richardson, Texas.
In October 2020, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced $600 million in awards for 5G experimentation and testing at five U.S. military test sites, representing the largest full-scale 5G tests for dual-use applications in the world.
AT&T said that this successful demonstration of its 5G networking capabilities allows the program to advance to its next stage, which stipulates the provision of 5G across the 120,000 square foot Naval Base Coronado warehouse. With this initiative, the telco expect to securely connect smart warehouse application infrastructure to provide high-speed, low-latency 5G connectivity for autonomous mobile robots, video cameras, Internet of Things (IoT), and AR/VR systems that will enable inventory tracking, transshipment and other elements of DOD’s objectives for the test. Following successful completion of that stage of the test, AT&T 5G is expected to integrate with official Navy systems to enable Smart Warehouse capabilities.
DOD had selected AT&T as the primary 5G networking services provider for two of the four U.S. military test sites where it is testing 5G capabilities as part of DOD’s Tranche 1 experiments
The objective of 5G smart warehousing project at Naval Base Coronado is to develop a 5G-enabled smart warehouse, focused on transshipment between shore facilities and naval units, to increase the efficiency and fidelity of naval logistic operations, including identification, recording, organization, storage, retrieval, and transportation of materiel and supplies. Additionally, the project will create a proving ground for testing, refining, and validating emerging 5G-enabled technologies.
Meanwhile, the telco is also involved in an augmented reality/virtual reality training project at the U.S. Army base Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas. The objective of this project is to enable modular, deployable and secure 5G connectivity on currently available training devices, specifically the Instrumentable Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (I-MILES) and the U.S. Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). DOD is testing 5G support for tactical edge use cases that integrate I-MILES and IVAS with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) capabilities to conduct mission planning, distributed training, and operations.
“AT&T 5G demonstrated data throughput speeds of more than 4 gigabits per second on commodity mobile user equipment, far surpassing the data throughput speeds DOD has seen in other tests. More importantly, we look forward to moving to the next stage of implementation with DOD at Naval Base Coronado and helping it create its Smart Warehouse there with a scalable solution,” said Lance Spencer, client executive vice president, defense, AT&T Public Sector and FirstNet.
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