Hi, I'm Sam Kotla,
Senior Staff Engineer at Qualcomm Technologies.
Connectivity and analytics feature
prominently in Industry 4.0
as industry leaders seek to improve operational efficiency
and responsiveness.
5G is a foundational Industry 4.0 technology
because it helps cut the wires
for more observable and responsive industrial processes
while meeting demanding connectivity requirements.
Factories can present challenging radio environments
with fast movements and large metallic obstructions.
5G was built for such challenges
and we, at Qualcomm, have been working hard
to advance 5G for industry.
I'm at our over-the-air testbed for the factory of the future,
located at our headquarters in San Diego, California,
where we develop and demonstrate
industrial applications of 5G.
The conveyor belt behind me brings objects,
black and green pucks, into the
field of view of a smart camera,
which uses onboard AI to classify them.
A 5G device wirelessly connects the smart camera
to a gNodeB over the 5G air interface or
to another 5G device over a 5G sidelink interface.
Object-detection triggers from the smart camera are received
by the 2nd 5G device connected to the PLC
that controls the industrial robot and the gates.
The robot must receive control signals
from the PLC at the right time to correctly pick
and sort the pucks by type.
So, synchronization is critical.
The PLC also controls the gates, which must open
at the right time for the pucks to move
along the conveyor uninterrupted.
5G supports time-sensitive networking,
or TSN, transparently across the network.
TSN is used to synchronize the controller
with the various sensors and actuators,
such as the camera, the robot, and the gates.
In addition to TSN, another key requirement
is ultra-reliability,
which 5G delivers with Coordinated Multi-Point transmissions,
or CoMP, using multiple transmission
and reception points, or TRPs.
This will allow more robust transmissions
in challenging radio environments.
Finally, 5G sidelink enables direct communication
between the smart camera and the PLC with just one hop.
Now let's look at the demo's dashboard.
Since TSN and ultra-reliable communications,
or URC, are switched ON,
we see zero packet errors
and sub-microsecond time synchronization,
despite 2 of the 4 TRPs being blocked.
When we turn URC OFF, we see the signal strength dropping
since 2 of the TRPs are blocked.
The number of packet errors increases
due to signal degradation.
When we turn URC back ON and TSN OFF,
we see the signal strength recover
and the packet errors return to zero,
but time synchronization is now much poorer
than 1 microsecond, which degrades robotic arm accuracy
and many pucks are being missed,
as shown by the red beacons around them.
Over a 24-hour period,
we only achieve three-nines,
or 99.9% reliability with URC OFF.
With URC ON, reliability increases significantly
to six-nines, or 99.9999%,
giving industry the robustness needed
to go wireless with 5G.
The new 5G sidelink between the 5G devices
has been OFF all along.
From a different angle,
we can visualize the activated 5G sidelink
for direct device-to- device communications.
If the sidelink gets blocked,
the packet errors for the 5G sidelink increases
but the 5G air interface to the gNodeB
has no packet errors due to URC
and can be used as fallback.
5G sidelinks can boost industrial IoT capacity significantly
by using precious spectrum resources more efficiently.
In this 3GPP standard- compliant network simulation,
a factory floor has 18 5G gNodeB,
each with 2 TRPs, covering numerous 5G IIoT devices.
By default, when 5G sidelink is OFF,
two-hop transmissions must be used between 5G IoT devices.
The network has enough capacity to support 1,080 IIoT devices
with six-nines, or 99.9999% reliability.
With sidelink ON, 5G IoT devices can use one-hop
direct transmission between them.
Two-hop transmissions are needed
only if a sidelink transmission fails, due to a blockage,
for example. The simulation shows
5G sidelink to drastically increase
the devices supported from 1,080
to 1,980 with six-nines reliability
- a capacity gain of 1.8x!
In summary, we have demonstrated
key 5G capabilities over-the-air
like advanced ultra-reliability
with coordinated multi-point transmissions,
time-sensitive networking
with microsecond-level synchronization,
and direct communications with 5G sidelink
for boosting industrial IoT capacity
in the 5G factory of the future,
which is why we believe 5G sets the foundation
for Industry 4.0.