NFV-Enabled Experimental Platform for 5G Tactile Internet Support in Industrial Environments

Abstract

As industries are under pressure for shorter business and product life cycles, there is an extensive effort from the research community for novel and profitable automation processes. This effort has given rise to the fifth-generation (5G) Tactile Internet, which is characterized by extremely low latency communication in combination with high availability, reliability, and security. In this paper, we discuss the key technologies to support the Tactile Internet characteristics in industrial environments and then showcase the implementation of a novel 5G network function virtualization enabled experimental platform. Given that ultra-reliable low-latency communication is crucial for the manufacturing process, we demonstrate that, in our setup, submillisecond end-to-end communication is attainable, proving the suitability of our platform for Tactile Internet industrial applications.