Shehzad Ali Ashraf

Analysis of ultra-reliable and low-latency 5G communication for a factory automation use case

The fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks is starting to be defined to meet the wireless connectivity demands for 2020 and beyond. One area that is considered increasingly important is the capability to provide ultra-reliable and low-latency communication, to enable e.g., new mission-critical machine-type communication use cases. One such example with extremely demanding requirements is the industrial automation with a need for ultra-low latency with a high degree of determinism. In this paper, we discuss the feasibility, requirements and design challenges of an OFDM based 5G radio interface that is suitable for mission-critical MTC. The discussion is further accompanied with system-level performance evaluations that are carried out for a factory hall-wide automation scenario with two different floor layouts.

Latency Critical IoT Applications in 5G: Perspective on the Design of Radio Interface and Network Architecture

Next generation mobile networks not only envision enhancing the traditional MBB use case but also aim to meet the requirements of new use cases, such as the IoT. This article focuses on latency critical IoT applications and analyzes their requirements. We discuss the design challenges and propose solutions for the radio interface and network architecture to fulfill these requirements, which mainly benefit from flexibility and service-centric approaches. The article also discusses new business opportunities through IoT connectivity enabled by future networks.

Wireless Communication for Factory Automation: an opportunity for LTE and 5G systems

The evolution of wireless communication from 4G toward 5G is driven by application demands and business models envisioned for 2020 and beyond. This requires network support for novel use cases in addition to classical mobile broadband services. Wireless factory automation is an application area with highly demanding communication requirements. We classify these requirements and identify the opportunities for the current LTE air interface for factory automation applications. Moreover, we give an outlook on the relevant design considerations to be addressed by 5G communication systems.

Deployment Strategies for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication in Factory Automation

Factory automation is one of the challenging use cases that the fifth generation, 5G, networks are expected to support. It involves mission-critical machine-type communications, MTC, with requirements of extreme low-latency and ultra-reliable communication to enable real-time control of automation processes in manufacturing facilities. In this paper, we discuss the deployment strategies for the 5G mission-critical MTC solution designed to meet the needs of factory automation applications. The paper analyzes the coverage and capacity aspects based on a series of system-level evaluations considering both noise-limited and interference- limited operations. It further analyzes the related trade-offs to provide insights on the network deployment strategies for a realistic factory scenario.

Control Channel Design Trade-Offs for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication System

Future generation of wireless networks, i.e. 5G, is envisioned to support several new use-cases demanding transmission reliability and latency that cannot be achieved by the current cellular networks such as long-term evolution (LTE). This paper looks at different design aspects of the control channel(s) to support ultra-reliable low-latency communication considering factory automation as an example scenario. In particular, we show that a fairly balanced design for both the uplink and the downlink control channels can be made given an appropriate selection of modulation, coding, diversity scheme, and time/frequency resources. By means of link-level simulations, we also show that the proposed control channel design supports a block-error rate of 10-9 under Rayleigh fading conditions at a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio comparable to that supported by current 4G systems (e.g. LTE). Furthermore, a radio frame structure is proposed to support the user plane end-to-end latency of 1 ms.

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communication for wireless factory automation: From LTE to 5G

Wireless factory automation has been receiving much interest in recent years due to its advantages of low cost and high flexibility over the traditional wired networks. Factory automation is also considered as one of the important use-cases of the 5th generation (5G) cellular system. In this paper, we present comprehensive system level simulation results to evaluate the performance of LTE and new 5G radio-interface design concepts in a realistic factory deployment scenario. We believe that our detailed evaluation studies bring valuable insights to show the potential of 3GPP technologies for different factory use-cases.