The 4th industrial revolution or the digital enterprise will re-build the business models in various industries through connectivity. The drivers for 5G NR in industrial IoT (IIoT) networks are (i) increased productivity, (ii) digital transformation through wireless technology and (iii) the use of private networks. The industrial IoT (IIoT) network will be scalable in connectivity, and number of devices and will be designed to deliver optimal performance for all industrial applications using key LTE and 5G NR features like URLLC, mMTC, 5G positioning, time sensitive communications (TSC) and to a lesser degree eMBB.
This presentation begins with an overview, use cases and requirements for IIoT. The presentation discusses the foundation for URLLC in NR which was laid out in 3GPP Rel 15, mainly in support of IIoT, and URLLC enhancements in Rel-16, NR Positioning (Rel-16), TSC (Rel-16) and a version of NR known as NR-Light which is planned to be introduced in Rel 17. NR-Light aims to address use cases that cannot be met by NR eMBB, URLLC or mMTC. The system performance for an indoor ray traced factory using key 5G NR features like URLCC and TSC is presented.