Measurements of the Safety Function Response Time on a Private 5G and IO-Link Wireless Testbed

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the response times of safety functions in a testbed combining private 5G and IO-Link Wireless, highlighting latency and cycle time considerations for industrial safety applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel testbed integrating 5G and IO-Link Wireless for safety function timing analysis in industrial environments.

Findings

Latency assessments reveal system cycle times and potential bottlenecks.

Worst-case response time estimates support safety compliance planning.

The testbed demonstrates feasibility for real-time safety functions in wireless industrial setups.

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been a growing significance of interactions between human workers and automated systems throughout the factory floor. Wherever static or mobile robots, such as automated guided vehicles, operate autonomously, a protected environment for personnel and machines must be provided by, e.g., safe, deterministic and low-latency technologies. Another trend in this area is the increased use of wireless communication, offering a high flexibility, modularity, and reduced installation and maintenance efforts. This work presents a testbed implementation that integrates a wireless framework, employing IO-Link Wireless (IOLW) and a private 5G cellular network, to orchestrate a complete example process from sensors and actuators up into the edge, represented by a programmable logic controller (PLC). Latency assessments identify the systems cycle time as well as opportunities for improvement. A worst-case estimation shows the attainable safety function response time for practical applications in the context of functional safety.