Ultra reliable low latency communications as an enabler for industry automation

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) is the most important service required to enable true wireless factory automation, as mission-critical industrial processes can only switch to wireless technology if URLLC quality of service can be attained. This chapter explores some of the technologies that are being developed to enable URLLC. It discusses industry automation applications that require URLLC and presents existing wireless network solutions for industrial automation. URLLC is an enabler of several core factory automation applications: however the existing network technologies have to be improved in order to support its stringent latency and reliability requirements. There are several interesting research directions such as latency aware hybrid automatic repeat request, channel coding techniques and network slicing, which are bringing URLLC closer to reality. Moreover, the flexible structure of 5G is going to allow for interesting business models to arise and will quickly provide the means for spreading and evolving technology through new business models.