5G URLLC: Evolution of High-Performance Wireless Networking for Industrial Automation

At the core of digital transformation of the manufacturing industry is the objective to unlock data at multiple points of the production system and produce insights to improve and optimize all aspects of the business operations. Tremendous advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning make it possible to analyze a vast volume of the field and production data and translate them into optimization decisions. Real-time access to the data complements efficient machine learning inference for timely and actionable insights. Flexible and re-configurable manufacturing also demands high-performance, pervasive, and low-la-tency communication links supporting mobility of workers, devices, and robots. Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio (NR) introduced basic support for Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication (urLLC) in Release-15 through intrinsic design features. Release-16 extends real-time capabilities of 5G NR to different verticals, addressing use cases in factory automation, the transport industry, and electrical power distribution. Wireless technologies such as 5G urLLC should co-exist with incumbent and emerging industrial Ethernet systems such as Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) in a heterogenous networking architecture. Hence, specification of interworking with TSN is also part of 3GPP Release-16. In this article, we discuss low-latency and high-reliability features supporting industrial automation, focusing on Release-16 design specifications. The interworking aspects with TSN and time synchronization accuracy limits are also highlighted, followed by performance evaluation of control and data traffic channels of 5G NR with respect to urLLC requirements.