Performance Analysis of 5G RAN Slicing Deployment Options in Industry 4.0 Factories

TL;DR

This paper evaluates different 5G RAN slicing strategies for Industry 4.0, focusing on delay guarantees and resource efficiency using analytical and heuristic methods.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic network calculus framework and a heuristic slice planner for optimizing RAN slicing in industrial environments.

Findings

Per-flow slicing prevents delay violations under resource scarcity.

Slice sharing improves resource efficiency but weakens delay protection.

The proposed planner operates effectively at non-real-time scales.

Abstract

This paper studies Radio Access Network (RAN) slicing strategies for 5G Industry~4.0 networks with ultra-reliable low-latency communication (uRLLC) requirements. We compare four RAN slicing deployment options that differ in slice sharing and in the degree of per-line or per-flow isolation. Unlike prior works that assume a fixed slicing structure, this work addresses how RAN slicing should be instantiated in the presence of multiple production lines and heterogeneous industrial flows. A Stochastic Network Calculus (SNC)-based analytical framework and a heuristic slice planner are used to evaluate per-flow delay guarantees and radio resource utilization. Within the considered RAN-level analytical model, the results show that, under resource scarcity, only per-flow slicing prevents delay violations, whereas slice-sharing and hybrid deployments improve aggregation efficiency at the cost of weaker protection for the most delay-critical flows. Execution-time results show that the proposed planner operates at non-real-time (Non-RT) time scales, supporting its implementation as an rApp within Open RAN (O-RAN) Non-RT RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) control loops.