Bhushan Joshi:
As CSPs focus on securing network energy performance, and achieving sustainability goals, the best network no longer means just fast and reliable. Taking control of network deployments is a crucial aspect of redefining the best network as high performing, energy efficient, and sustainable. The Ericsson site Digital Twin offers CSPs improved control throughout the full network deployment cycle, helping them increase speed, efficiency, and sustainability. Welcome to another episode of the Imagine Studio Unboxed. I'm Bhushan Joshi, the head of sustainability for Ericsson in North America, and I'll be your host today. Let's deep dive into how you can redefine the best network with Ericsson.
Today in the studio we have Tomas Severinas and Brandon Carll, our SMEs focused on side digital twin solutions. Welcome, guys.
Tomas Severinas:
Hey, Bhushan, thanks for having us.
Bhushan Joshi:
Yeah, great that you could join us. So digital twins, this is a buzzword that everyone's been hearing about. Let's start with that. What is a digital twin? And the second question is, what's the key differentiator of Ericsson's site Digital Twins solution?
Brandon Carll:
Yeah, spot on. There's a lot of buzz about digital twins, and there's a lot of different definitions that exist in the market about what a digital twin really is. At a high level, it's a digital representation of what's physically somewhere in the world, a cell site in this case. And for Ericsson, we do that a bit differently. We go a step beyond physical dimensions of that site, height, weight of different things that we actually assemble different components into a 3D model.
Tomas Severinas:
One other key differentiator is today we're trying to take every single bit of database system that our carriers have, such as RF database systems, inventory database systems, the planning systems when it comes to EME/EMF, and we're trying to overlay that site Digital Twin with all of those layers so our carriers could have a single source of truth without having to rely on multiple databases that aren't interconnected and are not being kept up to date. As a result, it results in a lot of the latest network deployments.
Bhushan Joshi:
Interesting. It's basically, the better you can measure, the better you can manage. It's the mantra that this fits with.
Tomas Severinas:
Absolutely.
Bhushan Joshi:
Great. Okay, let's dive in a bit more. The next question is, how can the Digital Twin solution really enable intelligent deployment, and what benefits does it provide our CSPs when you compare that to the traditional method of deployment?
Tomas Severinas:
Sure. Today the Ericsson site Digital Twin really helps to accelerate the deployment of the network, and mainly in the face of the planning and the design phase. It's going to help our carriers cut off the CapEx, reduce the cycle times by having a single source truth of data that would allow them to have synchronized documentation from the RFDS, radio data frequency sheets, construction drawings, mount analysis of bill of materials, and any other documentation that is needed to deploy a site.
Brandon Carll:
Yeah, there's so many different disciplines that go into telecom, and usually each of those disciplines has their own process. The power of Digital Twin is really bringing those processes together, having everyone look at that same source of truth. Great answer.
Bhushan Joshi:
Awesome. So single source of truth, that seems to be the key. The last question that we have is, how can site Digital Twin really help our CSPs achieve some of their sustainability and Net Zero objectives?
Brandon Carll:
Tomas mentioned some of the cycle time things, and as I referred, we have a lot of different people that have to go see that site because they bring their different expertise. Probably more than a dozen visits to the site throughout course of the build. And a build can take a couple years. The value of doing this is if you can remove just one site visit times hundreds of thousands of sites that get built, you're talking more than a couple thousand metric tons of CO2 that are removed from that process. And I think you probably know better than us, the metric ton of CO2 is roughly the equivalent of planting a forest the size of Central Park.
Bhushan Joshi:
Wow.
Brandon Carll:
And so we're talking multiple thousands of those. It's multiple Central Parks that you bring back into the environment as a result of not having to do one site visit during that build.
Bhushan Joshi:
Wow. That's measurable, quantifiable impact with just one visit avoided.
Brandon Carll:
Absolutely.
Bhushan Joshi:
That's amazing. Tomas?
Tomas Severinas:
Yes. One of the other key things that we have found is the access waste of the material being ordered in the planning stages of the material. So companies and other suppliers are ordering access material like the trunks, any other supporting material that is not necessarily needed. If you could only precisely measure the amount of cable that you need, you would be able to avoid immense amount of waste that is happening today in the bill of material ordering phase.
Bhushan Joshi:
Great. And I think avoiding that excess waste is key because the cables have such huge embodied emissions that come with it. So anytime you avoid it, you're saving carbon emissions there as well. Well, great. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a really exciting episode of the Imagine Studio Unboxed. Now, let's go over to Jeff and see how these digital twins are in action.
Great. We're here at the Imagine Studio. Jeff, let's look at the Digital Twin demo.
Jeff Waskow:
All right, let's get started here. As you know, a digital twin is a digital representation of something in the real world, it's physically there. Today we're going to look at the Ericsson site Digital Twin
And we're going to start here with a 3D model of our site. A typical site, this is a mock-up site. And on the left-hand side you'll see the different equipment that we can install. There's actually up to 20,000 pieces of equipment in the database here that I can install at this site. We have a few examples here. Let's start with the indoor, or something that might go in an enclosure.
I'm going to pull the battery over here to our site, because that's one of the things we need. Now that we have the battery there, the whole site knows that we have a battery backup going on, and how long that's going to last based on the capacity and the product of that battery that I just placed there. The digital twin also tells you the place to put it in the rack. As I drag my two basebands over here, it's indicating I should put those in the center of the rack. It's the best place to install. And now I placed two basebands, the Ericsson products here, and it also knows the capacity of my site. As I start adding more and more equipment, it'll tell me if I overload the basebands or I have too many extra basebands. I want to properly configure the site. That's a simple indoor install there. Now let's look at the outdoor part, or the tower.
A mock-up tower here. The database also has non Ericsson products, so you can mix and match Ericsson with other vendors. In this case here, we're going to install some passive antennas from another vendor. As I grab these, the digital twin lights up and highlights where I should place it properly on this tower that's been built. Okay. At the same time, it knows the weights of this equipment. So the tower is the capacity okay, or did I overload the tower? I got room to add more antennas. Will these work well with the radios I'm about to add?
Bhushan Joshi:
So the attributes of the product come with-
Jeff Waskow:
Yes, all the attributes come with it, so the documentation is updated in real time as I add equipment, remove equipment. That documentation is going to be ready to go, I don't have to go to another tool update that same thing.
Bhushan Joshi:
Great.
Jeff Waskow:
Everything's in sync. I got my antennas, I got my basebands, now I need some radios. Now in this case here, this is Ericsson radios. And it's saying to place them here on the tower. And if everything goes well, I got the proper match of radios, antennas, and basebands. An efficiently configured site, and all the documentation to match.
Bhushan Joshi:
Jeff, when in the deployment cycle is this happening?
Jeff Waskow:
This is before the deployment. I want to make sure I have all the equipment needed, that it's going to work well. I don't have to place antennas up there, then take them back down, remove it, send people up and down towers. Which, much safer, much more efficient, that sort of thing, right?
Bhushan Joshi:
It's like an electronic sandbox that you are setting it up how you want it before you actually physically do it on site.
Jeff Waskow:
All those digital attributes are calculated in real time so I don't misconfigure my [inaudible 00:08:43]-
Bhushan Joshi:
And that's where the efficiencies come into play.
Jeff Waskow:
Exactly, yeah. All right, we have one more piece of equipment here. We need a little bit of transport or some transmission equipment, so we're going to add the Ericsson MINI-LINK product here. And that's also good for our tower. Looks like we have a properly configured outdoor site here. And that's basically a quick summary of what you got there. Rather than the traditional way of doing things using many different tools to design this, a lot of paperwork, we have one single tool. We can completely build our digital twin, and then if that's all good and checks out well, we'll go build our site.
Bhushan Joshi:
Wonderful. Great. I think you can see how effective this makes the process of network deployment. Really speeding up the process, bringing in a ton of efficiencies, providing a single source of truth that we really need. And again, it's really important to have this tool as we think about making networks more high performing, energy efficient, and sustainable. Thanks so much, Jeff, for a great overview of the Digital Twin demo. And thank you for joining us on this exciting episode of the Imagine Studio Unboxed event. We hope to see you again in the next episode.
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