To date, very few studies have been conducted to analyse the effect of the harsh environments in process automation on the functioning of 5G standalone non-public networks. Mostly factory, laboratory, or outdoor environments have been analysed. Furthermore, the importance of 5G for mobile use cases is obvious but the behaviour of application relevant parameters in multi-cell networks has not been well documented. This paper presents a measurement campaign conducted at the TotalEnergies Raffinerie Mitteldeutschland GmbH, which analysed the effect of the movement of the user equipment and the measurement system within the test 5G campus network between multiple cells. Transmission time, update time, and message loss ratio are investigated during the measurements. The paper shows that interruptions in the communication, which are likely due to handovers, occur and consistently last between 500 and 600 ms for this particular campus network and its settings.

The use of wireless communication in industrial automation is increasing globally, necessitating the efficient utilization of communication resources. This requires adaptability to changing application requirements rather than planning solely for worst-case scenarios. A crucial concept, Communication Control Co-design (CoCoCo), highlights the need for mutual adjustment between communication infrastructure and application demands. This document outlines current research in CoCoCo, proposing a generalized architecture to guide researchers in addressing co-design challenges. By systematically linking various research topics to different parts of this architecture, the aim is to help researchers identify gaps and develop new approaches. Future plans include enhancing the literature review for a more comprehensive analysis of existing research and implementing a CoCoCo example as a proof of concept to demonstrate its practical application and effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

Industrial Ethernet networks are well-established communication systems in industrial production facilities. They are used in particular in applications with high demands on real-time capability and transmission reliability. In the context of applications with mobility requirements, such as mobile robots or rotating machine parts, however, they reach their practicable limits. In these cases, wireless communication systems are necessary. In addition to enabling the aforementioned applications, they promise further advantages, such as cost savings through simplified installation. However, the same requirements are placed on wireless systems as on their wired counterparts. This paper structures these requirements’ implications on industrial communication systems by deriving four mandatory properties that need to be fulfilled by any communication system for industrial applications. Current commercially available technologies are reviewed with respect to the mandatory properties. Addressing their shortcomings, an overview of current research approaches aiming to improve industrial wireless systems in the automation applications is given.

Reliable and time-limited data transmission is crucial for security applications in industrial automation. PROFINET and PROFISafe are widely used communication protocols in industrial applications that require reliable and deterministic data transmission. Integrating wireless communication systems like 5G with these protocols offers advantages such as mobility and ease of installation. However, to ensure the proper functioning of these hybrid networks, performance testing is essential. This work presents the performance analysis of a 5G network where PROFINET and PROFISafe frames are transferred. The performance test of the 5G system was carried out from the perspective of the application, following an approach already established in previous works. The results of selected test cases are presented, highlighting the time-wise network performance and potential limitations, providing insights of special interest to end-users.

Integration of 5G into Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) requires mapping of timing information and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters. 5G provides various QoS profiles with specific Packet Delay Budget (PDB) values, indicating an upper packet delay limit. Since the virtual 5G-TSN bridge is only an intermediate hop in a larger TSN network, the PDB cannot be interpreted as the maximum acceptable end-to-end (E2E) delay between the communication partners of the automation application, but only as the maximum delay within the 5G system. This paper discusses various communication scenarios and derives an approach for the analytical calculation of the 5G PDB for different TSN streams within a 5G-TSN converged network. Our results contribute to the concretization of TSN-specific 5G QoS identifiers (5QI) which are relevant for the TSN translators in order to enable seamless integration of 5G and TSN. Only with standardized 5QI and PDB values per TSN traffic class, device manufacturers and network equipment vendors can implement a consistent mapping.

5G is on the rise in both automated driving and industrial automation. So far, these application areas have been considered separately, although the automotive industry can apply them jointly. We examine the future car factory use case Self-Navigating Automotive Production (SNAP), which derives from Automated Valet Parking (AVP). While SNAP benefits from increased flexibility and efficiency, current issues include the lack of AVP standardization and higher system complexity in the factory due to additional cameras, software, as well as worker and machine collaboration. Our concept represents a novel solution for car production and combines both ecosystems.

Wireless networks are gaining relevance to industrial applications. This entails the necessity of careful performance testing of their capabilities in order to build trust in a communication network prior to and during its deployment in an industrial application. In this paper, a sophisticated approach to performance testing of communication networks from an industrial application's perspective is presented. Following this approach, a performance analysis of a hybrid network of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and PROFINET (PN) is carried out. The deployed measurement tools in the testing system and the system under test (SUT) comprising BLE and PROFINET components are described in detail. The performance tests are conducted in a laboratory using a channel emulator to recreate realistic propagation conditions. The performance testing results reveal significant interdependencies of the three overall system's parts, the application, the PROFINET and BLE networks. A conclusion on how to reduce the mutual impact is drawn.

Wireless extensions of time-critical industrial communication systems could provide many benefits including increased flexibility and mobility. Moreover, they might enable completely new manufacturing solutions. On the other hand, seamless integration to the existing infrastructure and high performance with minimal increase of latency and jitter are key requirements. A wireless network with these features is developed in the project ParSec. Here, especially the MAC layer design and the gateway concepts between the existing Industrial Ethernet solutions and the wireless ParSec system are improved. In this paper, we show the ParSec system's proof of concept using typical industrial components. In the experimental evaluation, low round-trip times and low jitter were measured that satisfy the majority of industrial requirements.

Wireless industrial communication requires high reliability and low latencies. In order to fulfill both requirements simultaneously, wireless approaches are being developed. One of these technologies is parallel sequence spread spectrum (PSSS). In comparison to direct sequence spread spectrum approaches, which employ a set of appropriate pseudonoise (PN) sequences, PSSS data symbols are spread based on a single cyclically shiftedm-sequence. Each cyclic shift of the chosenm-sequence is used as an individual PN-sequence. This enables a code division multiple access (CDMA) scheme with simple processing and thus, a fast hardware implementation. In order to investigate the impact of an inaccurate time synchronization, this paper presents a theoretical and simulative PSSS evaluation. Moreover, an iterative symbol detection is introduced, which neutralizes the impact of the nonorthogonalm-sequences and mitigates the degradation due to inaccurate synchronization. In addition, several reasonable resource allocation schemes are presented, which emphasize the PSSS systems flexibility.

Novel wireless systems are often first evaluated by simulation, before prototypes are tested and the concepts are standardized. In order to ensure relevant simulation results, the wireless channel has to be modelled properly and application oriented. Currently, only few considerable industrial channel models are available. The IEEE 802.15.4a model is the most commonly used. CM 7 applies for LOS modelling and CM 8 for NLOS environments. Both are only applicable for distances up to 8m. In order to enhance the existing channel models, an extended wide band measurement campaign including seven scenarios at three different industrial locations was performed. From different LOS and NLOS measurement series in a warehouse, a manufacturing shop and a mechanical workshop, values for the path loss exponent, RMS delay spread, coherence bandwidth and fading statistics were obtained, valid for distances up to 40m. Setup, scenarios and the results of these measurements are presented in this paper. The abundance of metallic reflectors and scatterers leads to a dense multipath environment, which causes Rayleigh distributed small scale fading for both LOS and NLOS scenarios. The path loss exponent is smaller than 2 for LOS scenarios and the PDPs show very small power decay constants due to the rich scattering environment. Moreover, the RMS delay spread was found to increase proportionally to the distance. Corresponding to this, the coherence bandwidth decreases inversely proportional to the distance. The measurement results are compared to the related work and especially with the IEEE 802.15.4a channel model.

Communication in industrial applications like factory automation (FA) demands very low latency combined with high reliability. Since state of the art wireless technologies are not entirely fulfilling FA requirements, novel approaches are being developed. In this context Parallel Sequence Spread Spectrum (PSSS) is a promising technology, which enables shortest latencies, whereas its bit error performance has not yet been analyzed. Similar to Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), where data symbols are spread each with an appropriate sequence, PSSS spreading is performed based on a cyclically shifted m-sequence. Each cyclic shift of the base m-sequence is code, which enables a CDMA scheme. This paper deduces a theoretical and simulative approach determining the bit error performance for an ideal CDMA and for a time offset between several nodes in an AWGN channel. Based on this analysis, performance constraints and reliability limits such as requested synchronization accuracy are revealed.