In particular, the 5G Playground includes:

• an indoor and outdoor wireless access environment,
• support of ultra reliable, low latency communication, enabling for example IIoT-support for factory shop floors,
• an automotive testbed environment, which extends across two parking floor in the FOKUS building,
• coverage of dense urban areas, for example via lampposts providing network access, and
• a nomadic 5G edge network, which can be deployed on demand at remote locations.

With these components, the 5G Playground is the first 5G test field within the inner city limits of a European capital to enable the development and validation of complete end-to-end 5G system architectures.

Fraunhofer FOKUS offers using the 5G Playground for joint research & development projects. For example, FOKUS to partners:

• the evaluation of innovative 5G network components and services in an indoor and outdoor environment
• Optimization of products, i.e. performance assessments and interoperability tests
• Proof-of-concept studies
• Evaluation of 4G to 5G migration scenarios
• Courses on 5G technologies and roadmap planning and support for migration scenarios
• Planning and installation support of remote testbeds at your premises

For research and development purposes, the 5G Playground is directly connected to a Germany-wide fibre glass network. FOKUS employs state-of-the-art, high-end optical wavelength devision multiplexing and demultiplexing to realize backbone connectivity of several 100Gbps.

The fibre-based connection allows to connect the playground existing, state-of-the-art access networks that are remotely deployed, as well as to prototype installations of upcoming 5G New Radio access technologies. Besides, the fire connection allows to tightly integrate with remote sites of research and development facilities of other partners and with remotely deployed backend storage and compute facilities.

Remote locations, which may be integrated in the 5G Playground, include for example the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute providing one means of new radio access technologies, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology providing a shop floor environment for experiments focusing on time-sensitive-networking (TSN).

The FOKUS 5G Playground is one of the two locations of 5G Berlin, which consists of the FOKUS campus and the TU Berlin / HHI campus.

As such, the 5G Playground is a nucleus for 5G Berlin to realize application-specific, 5G-ready end-to-end use cases.