Fifth generation (5G) wireless systems are expected to be a key enabler for factories of the future. In fact, they are not only seen as an evolution of current mobile broadband networks, but also as an “ecosystem” able (i) to provide the unified communication platform
needed to disrupt new business models and (ii) to overcome the shortcomings of current communication technologies. Along these lines, we can expect that the forthcoming 5G technology has the potential to enable a new family of multimedia services and applications in factory scenarios and, at the same time to unlock new business opportunities for manufacturing for the vast community of industries, SME, and academic bodies.
1. Challenges and opportunities of an un-wired industry
As is shown in Fig. 1, there are a number of critical machine-type communication (MTC) use cases such as intelligent transport systems, smart grid, and process and factory automation, that generally are classified according to mobility requirements, packet error rate and latency requirements [1]. However, the industrial automation use case is gaining momentum due to its wide range of applications with very tight to very loose delay requirements where the most stringent latency requirements reaching down to 1-5 ms. At the same time, also the reliability plays a fundamental role for this use case with packet error rate requirements that range from 10-9 to 10-7.