Factory Radio Design of a 5G Network in Offline Mode

Abstract

The manufacturing industry is connecting people and equipment with new digital technologies, enabling a more continuous stream of data to represent processes. With more things connected, the interest in a connectivity solution that can support communication with high reliability and availability will increase. The fifth generation of telecommunication, i.e., 5G has promising features to deliver this, but the factory environment introduces new challenges to ensure reliable radio coverage. This will require efficient ways to plan the Factory Radio Design prior to installation. 3D laser scanning is used at an ever-increasing rate for capturing the spatial geometry in a virtual representation to perform layout planning of factories. This paper presents how to combine 3D laser scanning and physical optics (PO) for planning the Factory Radio Design of a cellular Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network (5G) in a virtual environment. 3D laser scanning is applied to obtain the spatial data of the factory and the virtual representation serves as the environment where PO computation techniques can be performed. The simulation result is validated in this paper by comparison to measurements of the installed network and empirical propagation models. The results of the study show promising opportunities to simulate the radio coverage in a virtual representation of a factory environment.INDEX TERMS 3D laser scanning, 5G, factory radio design, Industry 4.0, long-term evolution (LTE), physical optics (PO), smart manufacturing (SM).

Binary Radio Tomographic Imaging in Factory Environments Based on LOS/NLOS Identification

“…Bärring et al [6] adopted a simplified simulation model for factory environments, where only flat and slowly curved surfaces of scatters are supported. Moreover, the materials of the walls, floor, and ceiling are assumed to be perfect electrical conductors (PECs).…”

“…In [6], an offline method was considered for the faculty radio design using 3D laser scanning and physical optics. In this method, the spatial data of a factory environment, such as the positions and shapes of walls, ceiling, floor, and other objects are first captured by 3D laser scanning.…”

5G Campus Networks: A First Measurement Study

“…Generally, measurements conducted in testbeds built from prototype equipment are a critical step in the research and development of complex engineering systems, such as 5G communication systems [23]- [27]. To date, 5G testbed measurements have primarily focused on characteristics of the physical layer of the 5G communication system, such as 5G electromagnetic field exposure [28], 5G radio coverage evaluation [29], and similar 5G physical layer aspects [30]- [37]. Another set of testbed studies have focused on 5G aspects related to multi-access edge computing (MEC), i.e., the paradigm of integrating computing capabilities into the 5G communication network infrastructure and operation, e.g., for in-network computation processing [38]- [40] and in-network re-coding of communication data packets [41]- [43].…”

Determining the impact of 5G-technology on manufacturing performance using a modified TOPSIS method

“…The eight industrial demonstrators were developed to serve real industrial needs and to be scalable solutions. Numerous previous publications have presented and explained the results from the project to serve the understanding of how 5G can support manufacturing, including (Åkerman et al 2018b(Åkerman et al , Lundgren et al 2017Bärring, Johansson, and Stahre 2020,;Bärring et al 2021). This study used the eight industrial demonstrators from the 5 GEM project to determine the impact of 5G-technology on performance indicators in industrial applications.…”