Wireless Safety in Industrial 5G Networks

The rising variability of production plants is one of the central challenges in industry, independent of the company size. Although, wireless communication has become an integral part of modern industrial systems with the introduction of the fifth generation (5G) of wireless technology, flexible and modular manufacturing systems have particular demands on the surrounding infrastructure. With the reliance on wireless communication comes an increased need for ensuring the safety and reliability of these networks, especially if existing wired connections are to be replaced. In this research paper the deployment of an industrial use case for time-critical communication with commercially available 5G hardware is presented. Therefor a test bed including 5G infrastructure and wireless connected production units using an industrial communication protocol is established. The capabilities as well as the challenges for ensuring the functional safe operation of 5G networks in industrial settings are outlined. Especially applications demanding low latencies combined with high reliability requirements are found to be not yet competitive to a wired setup without the comprehensive support from 5G network vendors and pre-commercial features of upcoming releases.