3GPP 5G Channel and Traffic Model for Industrial IoT Applications

Nowadays the concepts of ”smart factory” and ”Industry 4.0” are very important because they represent the last industrial revolution, which promises to have a huge impact on human lives and on the production cycles of every industry. The main driver of this revolution is the 5G technology which is able to provide higher performance by means of ultra low latency, very high multi-Gbps peak data rate and massive connectivity. In light of these considerations, it is vital that appropriate channel models and traffic models for the industrial environment are elaborated. Indeed, the industrial environment is characterised by particular features which are not present in other scenarios, even in the indoor scenario that can seem the most similar. This thesis focuses on the latest channel model proposed by 3GPP and on the traffic model suggested by 5G-ACIA through a white paper. In order to deploy a flexible industrial environment where all machineries are interconnected, can communicate with each other and can be controlled remotely, it is fundamental to understand how the channel model can be defined and how the traffic generated can be characterised. The main features of the 3GPP channel model are pointed out, by focusing in particular on the industrial scenario, and the peculiar parameters of the traffic model are highlighted. After that, the two models are applied to the BI-REX pilot line, which represents a peculiar example of new production line where the traditional technologies are integrated with new ones in order to obtain a fully interconnected industrial environment. The thesis aims at showing how to set the most important parameters of the two models and the most common use cases in an industrial traffic model. It represents a starting point for new works that want to implement these models.