New Nokia Industrial fieldrouters enhance machine insights through sensor-based and AI-powered contextual awareness
Technologies such as private wireless and edge computing drive industrial digitalization, and further demand is fueled by the promise of AI. Enterprises want to use it to achieve their goals to increase efficiency and improve sustainability, environmental performance and safety.
A recent study revealed that 98.4% of companies intend to increase their AI related investments. It will allow them to access and use data in greater quantities and interact with tools more intuitively, to become even more competitive. To collect the required data more assets must be connected, and expectations are now that the global IIoT devices market will grow. Recent reports show a foreseen CAGR increase of 16.8% from 2025 to 2030, from an estimated $70.28 billion in 2024.
Industrial enterprises operating across large sites, such as mines, ports and factories, often rely on multiple connectivity layers – including public and private wireless networks and Wi-Fi. To ensure assets, such as autonomous trucks and drill equipment, remain connected across their sites, connectivity paths and network handovers must be optimized. As enterprises connect more assets and ask more from their networks, it becomes increasingly complex to optimize connectivity.
To better assist enterprises in their digital operations, we have extended our Industrial devices portfolio.
Get more from your industrial assets to serve your multiple Industry 4.0 use case needs
The new Nokia Industrial 5G fieldrouters are designed to enable industrial enterprises to master their complex multi-connectivity environments. With two cellular and two Wi-Fi modules they can connect to practically any combination of public and private cellular and Wi-Fi networks.
With high Ethernet port density and a CANbus interface they can connect a multitude of industrial assets, to address the ever-increasing demand for operational data.
You can further support the needs of your Industry 4.0 use cases by leveraging Nokia MX Boost to benefit from reliable and seamless handovers across multiple connectivity technologies to either increase capacity for bandwidth demanding applications or enhance connectivity reliability by transmitting critical data over multiple paths. MX Boost also enables “make before you break” - solving the Wi-Fi mobility weakness by switching from one network to the next before the connectivity breaks. You can, for example, boost radio capacity to support demanding use cases that leverage resource-hungry video-based remote-control of machines and vehicles at sites such as mines, to increase safety. You can ensure seamless handovers for autonomous vehicles across your port, factory or mine. You can even identify the best connectivity path based on where your asset is on your site!
Superior sensing
Sensor data can give industrial enterprises great insights into the status of their connected assets. Gyro, vibration sensors and accelerometers, for example, can be used in mining trucks and autonomous drills for more accurate and safe mining operations. And by leveraging acceleration data from autonomous vehicles, logistics companies, ports and mines can make better decisions to extend vehicle longevity and improve fuel efficiency to achieve sustainability goals.
The new Industrial 5G fieldrouters with sense-router software capabilities allow enterprises to stream data from these in-built sensors to an AI-powered contextual awareness solution, like Nokia MX Context. Used over Nokia MXIE, our on-premises industrial edge, they can solve the data silo challenge. You benefit from greater amounts of real-time data processed and analyzed from many more sources, including gyroscope, acceleration and environmental sensors, for greater intelligence and actionable insights. This will allow you to take preventive actions, to ensure safety in the field and to support sustainability improvement efforts, critical goals for many industries.
Asset location capabilities and navigation are improved too using the fieldrouters as they are equipped with advanced components and technologies for precise outdoor asset positioning at centimeter accuracy. This drives the greatest efficiency, safety and productivity boosts across vast mine sites and ports. Further, Bluetooth proximity detection allows assets to be tracked across underground mines and vast indoor factory floors where GNSS signal isn’t available.
Advanced AI and ML capabilities at device and machine level
Adding extended compute capability to the fieldrouters turns them into an intelligent far-edge device where contextual insights can be obtained from the connected assets directly on the spot. It even allows to run AI/ML software assets locally to generate insights and turn raw data into contextual insights.
Beyond connectivity, one of the new fieldrouters’ series is equipped with NPU/GPU (Neural/Graphical Processing Unit), enabling AI-driven automation and real-time data processing at the device edge. This combination of high-speed networking and AI capabilities allow these routers to work as MX Grid micro-edges, meaning they function as distributed compute nodes near machines or sensors for data pre-processing. This capability facilitates efficient collection and processing of sensor data, IIoT data and video/audio streams closer to their sources to lower the impact on the network capacity or allow for very fast reaction in terms of machine automation. Nokia MXIE orchestrates these micro edges, running complementary centralized resource-intensive AI applications and ensuring optimized performance across the industrial edge.
Industry-leading software stack
We also provide a highly robust software stack to support various VPN, IP or routing requirements as well as encapsulation of layer 2 industrial protocols. This facilitates reliable connectivity and efficient data routing to optimize performance during complex operations.
Backed by dedicated support packages
Because we know that each industry will have unique considerations, we have created a mix of off-site support packages to help your enterprise get up and running with the new fieldrouters and achieve your goals faster. For the mining industry, we have launched a local support package in Australia and Latin America, which will see our service experts working with teams on-site to optimize the fieldrouters within complex mining operations.
In addition to the ruggedized design, the new fieldrouters can be managed via our Industrial device management – IoT, enabling zero-touch provisioning and remote configuration capabilities, alongside your other Nokia Industrial and selected third-party IIoT devices. We also offer a comprehensive suite of applications that can be seamlessly deployed alongside the fieldrouters.
Find out more about how your industrial enterprise can extract value beyond connectivity using our new Industrial 5G fieldrouters:
