An Empirical Assessment of the Contribution of 5G in Vertical Industries: A Case for the Transportation Sector

Abstract

5G has been heralded as a critical, decisive technology for verticals' digital transformation. It targets innovative technical capabilities, allowing dedicated and improved communication mechanisms, going beyond the mere performance increase experienced by past generations' evolution. Despite the literature already envisaging the application of 5G-enabled solutions in vertical-based deployments, there is still a lack of experimental insights shedding light on the actual feasibility of 5G capabilities in specific vertical deployments. This gap is particularly evident in verticals that did not traditionally rely on mobile network solutions for their communication needs, such as safety-related control signals in railway operations. This paper aims to fill this gap by delivering an extensive empirical analysis performed through a 5G-enabled railway deployment. We designed and implemented a joint testbed, which allows us to faithfully reproduce two important transportation railway use cases that leverage 5G communications involving the vertical, communication service solutions operator, and integration actors. There, we expose the necessary integration engineering behind the enablement of 5G capabilities in such scenarios, considering the highly safety-certified and standardized environment of railway vertical sector regulations (which never considered the utilization of mobile networks in their development). We empirically demonstrate the performance capability achieved by the 5G-enabled network using two different systems, a carrier-grade one and an open-development one, in light of the required key performance indicators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the very first field trial and empirical evaluation of the suitability of 5G with the implementation of a 5G-enabled railway cross-level scenario within the transportation context.

Overview of Protocols and Standards for Wireless Sensor Networks in Critical Infrastructures

“…Regarding the range of use of wireless communication protocols and technologies implemented in CIs, as addressed in the referenced literature, their range of use is presented in Figure 6, where it is evident that cellular communication and ZigBee emerge as the most popular protocols, followed closely by LoRaWAN. As stated in [41,42], which address the water key sector, 4G communication technology is used, while 5G is implemented in the energy sector, as stated in [43], and in the transportation sector, as stated in [44]. In [66], 5G is generally addressed as a useful implementation in smart grids and intelligent transport systems and healthcare, medical, industrial, and manufacturing sectors on the whole.…”

“…Lastly, the article of Daniel Corujo et al [44] explores the practical implications of deploying 5G technology in vertical sectors, focusing on the transportation sector, particularly the railway domain The paper presents a case study involving a 5G-enabled railway deployment, which serves as an empirical analysis of 5G capabilities in a specific vertical. Two transportation use cases related to railway operations are explored.…”

Is Release 15 Ready for the Industry?

“…Consequently, considerable research efforts were directed towards the development and utilization of Open RAN solutions, as evidenced by the work in [13], [14], [15], and [16]. Additionally, authors in [8] already evaluate the use of Open RAN solutions in the deployment of vertical use cases. For this later work it can be concluded that despite the benefits associated with open solutions, the technology is still being developed, thus having lower performance when compared with commercial solutions.…”

“…Authors in [22] analyse how the management of network slices can be done and the interactions of different stakeholders, by discussing the strategies that the 3GPP Network Slicing management functions allow for the deployment and control of the network slices that verticals will use. In addition, there are also organizations, such as 5G-ACIA and 5G-DNA 8 , dedicated to the standardization, promotion and dissemination of 5G for the industry.…”

“…This study focuses on assessing whether 5G technology in release 15 meets the stringent industry demands, ultimately evaluating its readiness for deployment in a factory floor for production. To this end, the work relies on a real-world commercial graded 5G SA Release 15 network and takes insights from: (i) white papers from industrial associations such as 5G-ACIA [2], [6]; and (ii) the requirements of several projects, including H2020 5Growth 1 [4], [8], Augmanity (Augmented Humanity) 2 [9], and Horizon-Europe Imagine-B5G 3 . To provide the reader with a more concrete contextualization of the paper's insights, examples of the Augmanity project are used throughout the paper.…”