Towards Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications: Typical Scenarios, Possible Solutions, and Open Issues

TL;DR

This paper reviews the key scenarios, challenges, and potential solutions for achieving ultra-reliable low-latency communications in 5G networks, emphasizing end-to-end delay and packet loss issues.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of delay components, summarizes multi-layer solutions, and discusses open issues in URLLC for wide-area networks.

Findings

Delay components and packet loss probabilities are identified for URLLC scenarios.

Constraints on end-to-end delay and packet loss are formulated.

Open issues in prediction and co-design for URLLC are discussed.

Abstract

Ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) has been considered as one of the three new application scenarios in the \emph{5th Generation} (5G) \emph {New Radio} (NR), where the physical layer design aspects have been specified. With the 5G NR, we can guarantee the reliability and latency in radio access networks. However, for communication scenarios where the transmission involves both radio access and wide area core networks, the delay in radio access networks only contributes to part of the \emph{end-to-end} (E2E) delay. In this paper, we outline the delay components and packet loss probabilities in typical communication scenarios of URLLC, and formulate the constraints on E2E delay and overall packet loss probability. Then, we summarize possible solutions in the physical layer, the link layer, the network layer, and the cross-layer design, respectively. Finally, we discuss the open issues in prediction and communication co-design for URLLC in wide area large scale networks.