Sectors

Canada’s key sectors need technology that’s been tested and validated before it can be adopted at scale. From smart agriculture and smart mobility to defence, advanced manufacturing, and more, CENGN Living Labs offer real-world testing environments where startups, scaleups, and end users can validate solutions and bring proven technology to market.

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Smart Agriculture

Canadian agriculture faces unique challenges from harsh climate conditions, vast distances, and diverse farming operations that make 5G, IoT, and AI technologies essential for the sector’s future success. Smart agriculture innovations are crucial for increasing productivity, enhancing climate resilience, improving resource management, and leveraging data-driven decision-making to support farming operations.

Without proper testing facilities, agricultural startups struggle to demonstrate clear benefits to potential adopters, creating significant barriers to technology adoption across the sector. Collaborative approaches that bring together tech innovators, end-users, and researchers are needed to provide hands-on validation opportunities, enabling Canada’s agricultural sector to enhance both productivity and sustainability through integrated smart technologies.

Learn More About the Smart Agriculture Living Lab

Smart Mobility

Canada’s transportation and mobility sector must tackle complex challenges that make connected and autonomous vehicle technologies, smart infrastructure, and mobility-as-a-service platforms increasingly essential for the sector’s evolution. These innovations are crucial for improving road safety, enhancing transportation efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, modernizing aging infrastructure, and leveraging real-time data and AI for better mobility planning across urban, rural, and worksite settings.

Without proper testing facilities, startups struggle to demonstrate real-world performance and safety benefits to potential adopters, creating significant barriers to technology deployment in the sector. Collaborative approaches, like CENGN Living Labs, that bring together innovators, infrastructure providers, and transportation authorities are needed to provide controlled validation opportunities, enabling Canada’s transportation sector to lead in next-generation mobility solutions through integrated smart technologies.

Learn More About the Smart Mobility Living Lab

Robotics

Canada’s traditional industries have mounting pressures that demand innovative robotic solutions, with agriculture dealing with labour shortages and precision farming needs, manufacturing requiring advanced automation for global competitiveness, and smart mobility needing logistics optimization and autonomous system integration. These sectors represent significant opportunities for robotics innovation, where autonomous systems can address critical operational challenges while enhancing productivity across these key economic areas.

Canadian innovators need accessible environments to validate their robotic solutions in authentic operational scenarios, allowing them to demonstrate capabilities to potential industry adopters who are hesitant to adopt unproven technologies. By facilitating hands-on validation, Canada’s traditional industries can enhance both operational efficiency and competitive advantage through strategic robotics integration, which is essential for maintaining the country’s position in the global marketplace.

Learn More About the Connected Robotics Living Lab

5G Advanced

Canada’s traditional sectors have been the backbone of the economy for generations but now require 5G support to keep Canada competitive globally while creating safer, more efficient operations.

5G networks address connectivity challenges facing Canada’s traditional sectors by delivering reliable communications for automation and data-driven operations. These capabilities position Canada’s sectors competitively in a global marketplace, where efficiency and technological integration drive success.

Learn More About the 5G Advanced Living Lab

Smart Building

Canada’s environments face mounting pressures from climate change, energy efficiency demands, urbanization, and the need for safe and resilient infrastructure, making smart building technologies, IoT systems, and intelligent building management platforms essential for the sector’s transformation. These innovations are critical for optimizing energy consumption, improving occupant comfort and productivity, reducing operational costs, enhancing building security, and integrating renewable energy sources while leveraging real-time analytics for predictive maintenance across residential, commercial, and industrial properties.

Without access to testing environments, many tech startups and scaleups cannot validate their solutions under real-world conditions, creating substantial barriers to market adoption. Collaborative ecosystems, like CENGN Living Labs, that unite innovators, building owners, and system integrators are essential to provide comprehensive validation environments, enabling Canada’s smart building industry to advance technologies that support net-zero commitments and position Canadian companies as global leaders in Smart Infrastructure.

Learn More About the Smart Building Living Labs

Advanced Manufacturing

Canada’s manufacturing sector faces mounting pressure from global competition, labour shortages, and the growing complexity of modern production environments, making 5G, IoT, advanced positioning, and intelligent automation technologies essential to its future. These innovations improve operational efficiency, enable predictive maintenance, and integrate automation systems that help Canadian manufacturers compete globally. Without access to real-world testing environments, startups and scaleups struggle to demonstrate the performance, reliability, and integration needed to overcome industry adoption barriers.

The Advanced Manufacturing Living Lab, powered by CNIMI and Ericsson, addresses this gap by providing a production-grade industrial facility in Drummondville, Quebec, where companies can validate solutions across private 5G, LoRaWAN, UWB, BLE, and RFID technologies alongside real manufacturing equipment, collaborative robots, and autonomous mobile robots.

Learn More About the Advanced Manufacturing Living Lab

Cloud-Based Solutions

Companies building cloud-based services, platforms, or hardware products with cloud components need to know their solutions perform under real-world conditions. Performance, reliability, scalability, and security all need to be validated before buyers, investors, and partners will commit.

CENGN’s Performance Testing Services offer a customizable testing environment on the CENGN Data Centre, sovereign Canadian infrastructure accessible remotely from anywhere in the country. Startups and scaleups test with expert engineering support, whether they’re preparing for market entry or scaling ahead of a major deployment.

Learn More About CENGN’s Performance Testing Services

Defence & Dual-Use Technologies

Canadian companies developing technologies for defence, public safety, security and other dual-use applications can submit an Expression of Interest for a CENGN Living Lab Project to test and demonstrate their solutions in relevant operational environments.

From autonomous systems, drones, and robotics to private 5G/LTE, connected infrastructure, sensing, and multi-system coordination, CENGN’s Living Lab Initiative provides access to specialized facilities, infrastructure, and expertise to support diverse validation needs.

Have a technology you want to test?

Submit an Expression of Interest

Program Guidelines

Learn more about applying for a project and our applicant acceptance criteria.

View the Program Guidelines

About CENGN

CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, helps startups and scaleups bring their solutions to market. CENGN provides the resources and technical expertise to test and validate innovative solutions while developing tech talent through its internship programs.

Since 2014, CENGN’s programs have created nearly 12,000 Canadian jobs, contributed $1.15 billion to Canada’s GDP, supported over 300 internships with a 97% employment rate, and completed over 230 commercialization projects to build Canada’s position and expertise in the global technology landscape.

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Contact

Do you have a question about a Living Lab or the CENGN Living Lab Initiative?

CENGN’s Business Development Team oversees the Living Labs and supports innovative organizations in testing, validating, and scaling their technology solutions.

For questions about partnership opportunities or program applications, please contact the Business Development Team at [email protected].

CENGN Living Lab Initiative

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