Industrial communications have very challenging requirements, especially in Factory Automation (FA) scenarios. Some of these requirements are: packet deadline bounds, high reliability, low transmission jitter, and communication determinism. Wireless communications solutions offer significant advantages over wired solutions: lower costs, faster and seamless deployment, higher flexibility and scalability, and free movement of the systems communicated wirelessly. However, standard wireless technologies do not provide enough performance to satisfy all of the industrial communications requirements in most cases and, therefore, wired solutions cannot be directly replaced by wireless solutions. In this work, we present SHARP (Synchronous and Hybrid Architecture for Real-time Performance in IWSAN), a novel hybrid architecture specially designed for industrial automation, where Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) are required. This paper is mainly focused on the wireless segment of SHARP, a wireless architecture that includes a physical layer based on 802.11g along with a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) Medium Access Control (MAC) layer to ensure communication determinism, while maintaining backward compatibility with 802.11. Wireless SHARP segment behavior and its performance are evaluated through OMNeT++ simulations.

Network slicing is a promising technique used in the smart delivery of traffic and can satisfy the requirements of specific applications or systems based on the features of the 5G network. To this end, an appropriate slice needs to be selected for each data flow to efficiently transmit data for different applications and heterogeneous requirements. To apply the slicing paradigm at the radio segment of a cellular network, this paper presents two approaches for dynamically classifying the traffic types of individual flows and transmitting them through a specific slice with an associated 5G quality-of-service identifier (5QI). Finally, using a 5G standalone (SA) experimental network solution, we apply the radio resource sharing configuration to prioritize traffic that is dispatched through the most suitable slice. The results demonstrate that the use of network slicing allows for higher efficiency and reliability for the most critical data in terms of packet loss or jitter.

Wireless communications offer significant benefits over wired communications, which has increased their popularity in industrial applications. Nevertheless, the existing wireless standard technologies do not satisfy the requirements demanded by the most critical industrial applications and thus, wired communications cannot be directly replaced by wireless solutions. Moreover, the inclusion of movable nodes in the network brings new challenges, such as the handover mechanism. In this paper, a hybrid wired/wireless architecture designed for industrial control applications is proposed. To control the wired network, a time-sensitive network (TSN) is used and to control the wireless network a medium access control (MAC) protocol is designed. In order to communicate both networks, a bridge that acts as a deterministic access point (AP) with real-time features is also proposed. One of the fundamental parts of the proposed architecture is that it can be used in applications with mobility requirements. Hence, a soft-handover algorithm is designed which guarantees uninterrupted communication during its execution without the need for a second radio interface and with reduced growth in network overhead. The proposed architecture is evaluated in order to assess its performance. This paper extends our previous work, including both a theoretical analysis to determine the delay bounds of the proposed architecture and a comparison between the performances of the proposed handover algorithm with other algorithms proposed in the literature. The evaluation has been carried out through OMNeT++ simulations. The results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed handover algorithm compared with other state-of-the-art solutions.

The reliability and availability of network connectivity, which significantly varies with mobility, is crucial in Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM). Handover and roaming are the most challenging situations in terms of connectivity of cellular networks, which require switching across cells of the same cellular network or between Public Land Mobile Networks (PLMNs). This paper proposes a set of solutions for vehicular applications to mitigate the impact of mobility in service continuity, including a dual modem solution that reduces the interruption time when switching PLMNs, an adaptive bitrate mechanism for media streaming that increases reliability, a WebRTC server acting as a gateway in media streaming sessions between vehicles, and a MEC discovery and handover method. The proposed solutions have been evaluated executing an Extended Sensors application in several commercial and experimental 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) and Stand Alone (SA) setups with different Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), edge-cloud and cloud infrastructures to host services. It can be concluded from the results obtained that 5G networks have not yet achieved the required performance for CCAM, and that practitioners need to implement solutions and workarounds, such as the ones proposed in this work, to mitigate the issues. As lessons learnt from the deployment and experimentation, this paper also overviews a detailed set of problems and the proposed solutions that CCAM industry and cellular network stakeholders need to consider.

Fifth generation (5G) cellular networks are meant to provide not only higher data rates, but also high reliability, low latency and connectivity to a high number of nodes. These features would allow 5G to integrate Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) in a single network. However, there are several applications that are out of the specifications of 5G, such as closed-loop control in factory automation, which need Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) with a high refresh rate, or periodic URLLC. Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) could be a suitable solution to these scenarios, but WLAN standards do not have enough performance either. Synchronous and Hybrid Architecture for Real-Time (RT) Performance (SHARP) is a novel solution, which provides periodic URLLC through the use of Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and a wireless extension to TSN based on 802.11 (wireless SHARP / wireless TSN). However, SHARP is meant to support not only URLLC, but also Best-Effort traffic. To do so, providing backward compatibility with 802.11 could be a suitable option. This paper is focused on how interference-free conditions between wireless SHARP and 802.11 can be achieved, thus SHARP could support 802.11. Furthermore, we also define the extension of TSN to wireless SHARP. Finally, we have implemented a SHARP network in OMNeT, and the coexistence of the wireless systems and its performance is discussed based on the results obtained from the network simulations.