5G Field Lab Lands in Washington Apple Orchard
February 8, 2021 A Washington state apple farm is one of two agricultural sites in Snohomish County that is participating in the launch of an application development field lab that features dedicated access to 5G, edge, and cloud technologies.
The Food Resiliency Project, an economic development initiative funded by a grant through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), establishes a virtual and physical space for Snohomish County to bring together food growers and distributors with technology companies to collaboratively develop new capabilities that will improve the resiliency of the county’s agriculture sector and minimize future food service disruptions for consumers and regional agribusiness.
Behind the project is the 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab), a partnership of developers, corporate enterprises, academia, and government institutions. Partners include Intel, Microsoft, and T-Mobile.
“Every modern industry benefits from data and analytics,” Jim Brisimitzis, General Partner of the 5G Open Innovation Lab, said. “Agricultural sites typically lack the high-speed internet access necessary for connecting devices and generating the data growers and industry suppliers need to make real-time decisions for optimal impact. With the support of Snohomish County and our partners, we’ve proudly built an application development field lab with two dedicated sites through which our ecosystem members, partners, academia, and industry can collaborate to experiment, test, and learn. The outcome is the development of commercial use cases by way of research and innovation that agricultural vendors like John Deere and Cargill, for example, can use today.”
The foundation of the field lab is a dynamic testing platform with dedicated access to a 5G-capable, CBRS LTE private network through co-development access points.
One of the test sites is Swans Trail Farms, a retail farm and event venue that features apple orchards, strawberry fields, and a pumpkin patch. The other is Andrew’s Hay Inc., a commercial grower and supplier of premium feed for horses, cattle, livestock, and seed crops.
Each site will connect to an edge computing environment that allows developers to tap into cloud computing capabilities essential for latency-sensitive and compute-intensive applications. IoT applications include soil sensors measuring temperature, volumetric water content, oxygen levels and photosynthetic radiation, as well as supply chain and logistics tracking of food from farm-to-table to ensure safety and security.
“The Food Resiliency Project is an example of what can be accomplished using 5G technology, virtualized, cloud-native solutions, and the ecosystem of partners created by the 5G Open Innovation Lab,” said Sue Boyd, Microsoft Assistant General Counsel and 5G OI Lab board member. “The combined solution that includes a Microsoft 5G-capable network core, has been deployed in record time, and represents an invaluable collaboration between private and public domains that benefits the farmers, consumers and the environment.”
Snohomish County is the third-largest and one of the fastest growing counties in the state of Washington. It is home to the largest manufacturing facility in the world and one of the top tourist destinations in the region.
“Agriculture has always been a key sector in Snohomish County. This last year has taught us how vital it is it to ensure we have a steady, local supply of food,” Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers said. “Our partnership with 5G Open Innovation Lab can help safeguard our agriculture industry by providing farmers the tools they need for success, while securing fresh food for our community. We will continue to support innovation to strengthen and diversify our economy.”
The dynamic testing environment enables edge computing by using Dell servers based on Intel Xeon processors, VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform operating system for 5G applications, and the Intel Smart Edge multi-access edge computing platform. Wireless access is provided by T-Mobile, with live radios connected to T-Mobile’s broadband network for Internet backhaul and access to Microsoft’s Azure hyperscale cloud infrastructure and the Microsoft 5G-capable network core.
Expeto, an alum of the 5G Open Innovation Lab program, was selected to provide the wireless network core orchestration and end device (SIM) management platform. Two of the initial partners leveraging the field lab to drive learnings and solution development with the installation of IoT sensors and advanced research are Washington State University and innov8.ag, another alum of the 5G Lab’s program.
“As the leading network silicon provider, we are passionately committed to ushering in the full potential of 5G and edge by supporting a range of industries, including ones that power our social fabric like agriculture,” Caroline Chan, Vice President, Data Center Group and General Manager, Network Business Incubator Division, Intel, said. “This first-of-its-kind field lab is showcasing the benefits of 5G-to-farm-to-table and is a strong example of how industry collaboration can drive innovations that address both business and human challenges.”
“T-Mobile is America’s 5G leader and we’re building a network to serve all Americans, including rural farmers, giving them the tools they need to transform their businesses – for farmers that means producing more food using fewer resources,” John Saw, EVP of Advanced and Emerging Technologies at T-Mobile, said. “We can’t wait to see the 5G innovation that occurs as we work together to build the next big thing in agritech.”
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