5G Network Quality of Service Supporting Adequate Quality of Experience for Industrial Demands in Process Automation

Future converged communication systems have to fulfil challenging tasks, promised to be delivered by the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks. 5G shall enable services on the move with both well-known and new emerging performance requirements, while preserving high security and privacy levels to the customers’ diverse devices and applications. The applications typically demand a specific quality level end user expectation, measured by Quality of Experience (QoE). To enable QoE, the network has to provide the corresponding end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), described in terms of technical key performance indicators. The capability to offer different services, covering variable use cases for customer groups in a resource efficient manner, is denoted as network slicing. Addressed services shall cover a broad range of vertical business applications. This contribution will focus on selected solution concepts, rated by potential customers, to enable a set of exemplary industrial applications with demanding requirements in terms of throughput, latency, and device density. Such QoE levels are typically demanded by the automotive industry and car manufacturers to achieve cost-efficient production e.g., by wireless process control. Within the empirical survey of selected use cases of 5G in the automotive industry, the topics Remote Access and Predictive Maintenance, Design and Operation of Mobile Sensor Networks, Wireless Process Monitoring, and Wireless Control and Monitoring of Production Logistics receive the highest approval ratings.