Translating Cyber-Physical Control Application Requirements to Network level Parameters

TL;DR

This paper develops a mapping from application-level reliability and latency requirements of cyber-physical control systems to network parameters in 5G, enabling better network configuration for such demanding applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework linking application requirements to network parameters in wireless systems, validated through realistic factory automation simulations.

Findings

The mapping function accurately predicts network performance under various conditions.

Simulations confirm the framework's effectiveness in meeting application reliability and latency needs.

The approach guides network configuration to optimize reliability and utilization.

Abstract

Cyber-physical control applications impose strict requirements on the reliability and latency of the underlying communication system. Hence, they have been mostly implemented using wired channels where the communication service is highly predictable. Nevertheless, fulfilling such stringent demands is envisioned with the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G). The requirements of such applications are often defined on the application layer. However, cyber-physical control applications can usually tolerate sparse packet loss, and therefore it is not at all obvious what configurations and settings these application level requirements impose on the underlying wireless network. In this paper, we apply the fundamental metrics from reliability literature to wireless communications and derive a mapping function between application level requirements and network level parameters for those metrics under deterministic arrivals. Our mapping function enables network designers to realize the end-to-end performance (as the target application observes it). It provides insights to the network controller to either enable more reliability enhancement features (e.g., repetition), if the metrics are below requirements, or to enable features increasing network utilization, otherwise. We evaluate our theoretical results by realistic and detailed simulations of a factory automation scenario. Our simulation results confirm the viability of the theoretical framework under various burst error tolerance and load conditions.