Porsche Engineering and Vodafone Business expand 5G infrastructure to develop intelligent and connected cars
Porsche Engineering and Vodafone Business have set up the first 5G Hybrid Mobile Private Network (MPN) in Europe at the Nardo Technical Center (NTC). A test site in southern Italy, owned and operated by Porsche Engineering, is now offering its customers a real-time communications network that promises reduced delays, higher bandwidth, increased security and reliability, and faster deployment. With this, NTC once again underlines its role as a leading technology partner for the comprehensive development and validation of intelligent and connected vehicles for the global automotive industry.
Weissach/Nardò. “At our proving ground in Nardò, we are committed to constantly push technologies to the next level—so our customers can successfully meet the increasing demands of future mobility,” says Peter Schäfer, CEO of Porsche Engineering and Chairman of the Shareholder Committee of the Nardò Technical Center. “With the new 5G network, NTC offers its customers now an even better infrastructure to develop and test intelligent, autonomous, and connected vehicles.”
The new cell community infrastructure allows 4G and 5G insurance during the trying out center, which occupies a place of over seven hundred hectares withinside the Apulian vicinity and has extra than 20 tracks for excessive-overall performance trying out. With the Vodafone Business 5G solution, NTC objectives to permit its clients to successfully expand and validate a huge variety of destiny business-vital applications, from new connectivity, car-to-infrastructure, car-to-car and highly-automatic riding capabilities to self-riding vehicles.
As a subsequent era MPN, the brand new machine capabilities a hybrid infrastructure, the usage of a non-public community completely incorporated into Vodafone’s public cell community. Thanks to this progressive design, each non-public and public insurance is furnished on the identical location. Thus, the neighborhood populace can enjoy the availability of the quick 5G public community and on the identical time NTC’s clients can employ a non-public community that ensures excessive requirements in records security.
In addition to the new mobile network, NTK now also offers its customers a high-performance connection with a speed of 1 Gbit/s. This creates a fast and direct connection to the cloud, which enables globally networked collaboration and even more efficient data-driven design.
“5G mobile private networks can act as a springboard for companies by enabling them to evolve the way they do business,” adds Vinod Kumar, CEO of Vodafone Business. “In Nardò, MPN technology enables a facility that resembles an actual smart city, with coverage that is seamless on and off campus for the next generation of applications that will transform transportation and mobility. We’re excited to help the team in Nardò to plan for the future and unlock the business potential with some of our latest technologies.”
The new community marks every other critical bankruptcy withinside the future-orientated improvement of the trying out center. Since the purchase of NTC via way of means of Porsche in 2012, non-stop investments withinside the modernisation and technological improve of the proving floor had been made. Besides investments in workshops, protection systems, and different tracks, the well-known 12.6 kilometers round track, with a diameter of 4 kilometers, become absolutely renovated in 2019—along with the laying of fibre-optic cables for instant records transmission and for suitable avenue signage to validate computerized driving. NTC’s new 5G community is a part of broader collaboration tasks among the Porsche Group and Vodafone that, in August 2021, brought about the deployment of a standalone 5G community on the Porsche Development Center in Weissach, Germany.
About Nardò Technical Center
Nardò Technical Center in Puglia—since 2012 operated by Porsche Engineering Group GmbH—develops and tests connected and intelligent vehicles of the future. Founded in 1975, it now operates more than 20 test tracks and test facilities on more than 700 hectares and employs more than 160 people. Nardò Technical Center offers state-of-the-art engineering services for testing the vehicles of more than 90 automotive companies worldwide. Nardò Technical Center’s high-speed ring in Salento is unique in the world with a length of 12.6 kilometers, allowing vehicles to be tested under extreme conditions. Throughout its history, Nardò Technical Center has hosted tests of considerable importance, in several cases setting records of international significance.
About Porsche Engineering
Porsche Engineering Group GmbH is an international technology partner to the automotive industry. The subsidiary of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG is developing the intelligent and connected vehicle of the future for its customers—including functions and software. Some 1,600 engineers and software developers are dedicated to the latest technologies, for example in the fields of highly automated driving functions, e-mobility and high-voltage systems, connectivity and artificial intelligence. Their aim is to carry the tradition of Ferdinand Porsche’s design office, founded in 1931, into the future and develop the digital vehicle technologies of tomorrow. In doing so, they combine in-depth vehicle expertise with digital and software expertise.