Influences of logical link design in 5G campus systems

Abstract

5G technology is gaining further momentum to be applied in industrial automation use cases. This entails the necessity of accurate performance testing of 5G system capabilities to build trust in a communication network before and during its deployment in an industrial application. In this paper, a performance analysis of a commercially available Rel. 15 5G system composed of a 5G standalone network and industrial 5G devices was carried out. A sophisticated approach to conduct performance testing of communication networks from an industrial application's perspective is presented. The performance tests are conducted in an industrial test hall with real-world propagation conditions. Results of selected test cases in two different testing setups are presented. The performance testing results reveal a significant interdependence of timing behavior of uplink and downlink traffic, when both are running on the same device or on two separate devices. Based on the findings, conclusions are drawn, which are especially of interest to the end users.