Towards Intelligent Industry 4.0 5G Networks: A First Throughput and QoE Measurement Campaign

Abstract

5G promises to usher in the industrial 4.0 era. In that era, intricately managed autonomous industrial sites with for example remotely controller equipment and autonomous units promise previously unseen levels of efficiency. Although such scenarios are elusive, they come with strict long-since established safety requirements. To uphold such requirements, intelligent industrial 5G networks, that actively take into account prevailing conditions and dynamics of the workers on the site, the equipment, and the network, are needed. Little is known about the dynamics of actual industrial 5G networks and the interplay between network performance and QoE. In this paper, as a step towards intelligent industrial 5G networks, we measure network performance for an industrial 5G network, and conduct QoE experiments with remote controlled industrial equipment on an operational site. The results revealed unexpected relationships between QoE and network performance that shows how important domain-specific knowledge is when researching intelligent industrial 5G networks.