5G Rural Integrated Testbed (5GRIT)

The 5G Rural Integrated Testbed (5GRIT) is a partnership of SMEs and Universities building a 5G testbed which will develop and test innovative solutions for rural areas.

We will design and test amazing new services – previously not possible due to poor internet connections. We will also develop business cases trialling with rural businesses and residents.

We will build a 5G testbed for rural use cases in Cumbria, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Inverness-shire, Perthshire and Monmouthshire, using TV White Space technology to test the potential for shared spectrum radio to deliver 5G services to rural areas.

5GRIT is supported by Department for Culture Media and Sport through the 5G Testbeds Programme.

Use-Cases

On this large-scale rural 5G testbed the project will develop and trial innovative new services for rural areas that can benefit from 5G.

1. The 5G augmented reality tourism application which will be developed by World Around Me and North Pennines AONB. It will be tested at a number of visitor destinations across the network and will allow tourists to discover attractions, monuments, walks and much more through their phone camera.

2. The agricultural use-cases will employ drones and machine learning with the ability to deliver video streaming and collect other data on the shared spectrum network, giving farmers timely information on the state of their livestock or crops. The first will aim to differentiate between plants and weeds, in order to treat crops more precisely, efficiently and economically, moving on to process images of livestock.

3. The rural broadband use-case aims to show that shared-spectrum TV Whitespace can deliver 30Mbs broadband to remote rural areas which have previously had slow or no connection due to tree clutter or location. We will develop a home/business superfast broadband service by installing radios on to trial premises.

4. Blue Bear will provide Unmanned Aerial Systems using shared spectrum to fly drones beyond the visual line of sight and collect data. This will be demonstrated through imagery collected from flying over farmland, as well as surveying network infrastructure and gathering video data on tourist destinations.

The Network

The testbed uses shared spectrum of TV White Space to deliver reliable connectivity in rural areas.  Dynamic spectrum management and interaction with OFCOM’s TV Whitespace database will be tested out during the project.