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. 2021 Dec 29;22(1):229.
doi: 10.3390/s22010229.

5G Infrastructure Network Slicing: E2E Mean Delay Model and Effectiveness Assessment to Reduce Downtimes in Industry 4.0

Lorena Chinchilla-Romero  1   2 , Jonathan Prados-Garzon  1   2 , Pablo Ameigeiras  1   2 , Pablo Muñoz  1   2 , Juan M Lopez-Soler  1   2
Affiliations

5G Infrastructure Network Slicing: E2E Mean Delay Model and Effectiveness Assessment to Reduce Downtimes in Industry 4.0

Lorena Chinchilla-Romero et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Fifth Generation (5G) is expected to meet stringent performance network requisites of the Industry 4.0. Moreover, its built-in network slicing capabilities allow for the support of the traffic heterogeneity in Industry 4.0 over the same physical network infrastructure. However, 5G network slicing capabilities might not be enough in terms of degree of isolation for many private 5G networks use cases, such as multi-tenancy in Industry 4.0. In this vein, infrastructure network slicing, which refers to the use of dedicated and well isolated resources for each network slice at every network domain, fits the necessities of those use cases. In this article, we evaluate the effectiveness of infrastructure slicing to provide isolation among production lines (PLs) in an industrial private 5G network. To that end, we develop a queuing theory-based model to estimate the end-to-end (E2E) mean packet delay of the infrastructure slices. Then, we use this model to compare the E2E mean delay for two configurations, i.e., dedicated infrastructure slices with segregated resources for each PL against the use of a single shared infrastructure slice to serve the performance-sensitive traffic from PLs. Also we evaluate the use of Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) against bare Ethernet to provide layer 2 connectivity among the 5G system components. We use a complete and realistic setup based on experimental and simulation data of the scenario considered. Our results support the effectiveness of infrastructure slicing to provide isolation in performance among the different slices. Then, using dedicated slices with segregated resources for each PL might reduce the number of the production downtimes and associated costs as the malfunctioning of a PL will not affect the network performance perceived by the performance-sensitive traffic from other PLs. Last, our results show that, besides the improvement in performance, TSN technology truly provides full isolation in the transport network compared to standard Ethernet thanks to traffic prioritization, traffic regulation, and bandwidth reservation capabilities.

Keywords: 5G; delay; infrastructure slicing; isolation; network slicing; private networks; response time.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
System model: Private industrial 5G network with multi-WAT RAN and the 5G Core deployed on the edge cluster.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Example of queuing network to model the downlink of a network slice.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Industrial scenario layout.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Infrastructure setup for the evaluation.
Figure 5
Figure 5
CDF of the SINR and PMF of the number of PRBs obtained through simulations.
Figure 6
Figure 6
E2E mean delay for configuration 1.A (dedicated slices + std. Ethernet for the midhaul).
Figure 7
Figure 7
TN and NR-Uu mean delay for configuration 1.A (dedicated slices + std. Ethernet for the midhaul).
Figure 8
Figure 8
E2E and UPF mean delay for configuration 1.B (dedicated slices + TSN for the midhaul).
Figure 9
Figure 9
E2E and NR-Uu mean delay for configuration #2.A (shared slice + std. Ethernet for the midhaul).
Figure 10
Figure 10
E2E and UPF mean delay for configuration 2.B (shared slice + TSN for the midhaul).
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