Performance Analysis and Improvement of 5G based Mission Critical Motion Control Applications

Abstract: The industrial needs in the production of goods and control of processes within the factory keep leapfrogging daily by the necessities to fulfil the needs of the ever-growing population. In recent times, the industries are looking towards Industry 4.0 to improve their overall productivity and scalability. One of the significant aspects that are required to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0 is communication networks among industrial applications. Nowadays, industries from the cross markets are looking to replace their existing wired networks with wireless networks, which indeed brings many use-cases and a lot of new business models into existence. To make all these options possible, wireless networks need to meet the stringent requirements of these industrial applications in the form of reliability, latency, and service availability. This thesis focuses on a systematic methodology to integrate wireless networks like 5G, Wi-Fi 6, etc., into real-life automation devices. It also describes a methodology to evaluate their communication and control performance by varying control parameters like topology, cycle time, and type of networks. It also devises some techniques and methods that can improve the overall performance, i.e., both control and communication performance of the control applications. The method used to implement this work is a case study. This work integrates and tests the industrial applications in a real-life scenario. It is the best effort to bring a unique perspective of communication engineers and control engineers together regarding the performance of the industrial applications. This work tries to verify the suitability of the wireless in mission-critical control application scenarios with respect to their communication and control performance. Software for data analysis and visualization and its methodology for analyzing the traffic flow of the control applications via different wireless networks is demonstrated by varying different control parameters. It is shown that it is challenging for 5G to support the shorter cycle time values, and performance will get better and more stable with the increase in the cycle time of the control application. It is also found that the 1-Hop wireless topologies have a comparatively better control performance than 2-Hop wireless topologies. In the end, it is found that the communication and control performance of the motion control application can be improved by using the hybrid topology, which is a mixture of 5G and Wi-Fi 6, by modifying some key aspects. The thesis work helps to introduce a novel systematic methodology for measuring and analyzing the communication and control applications via different wireless networks. It also gives a better idea for the control engineers in the industry about which cycle times the different wireless networks and their topologies support when integrated with industrial automation devices. It also describes which wireless networks support industrial applications better. It ends with a novel methodology that could improve the performance of the mission-critical motion applications by using existing wireless technologies.