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

2026-03-30

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of meeting differentiated ultra-reliable low-latency communication (uRLLC) requirements in 5G-enabled Industry 4.0 factories, where multiple production lines and heterogeneous traffic coexist. It presents the first systematic comparison of four RAN slicing strategies—fully shared, per-production-line isolation, per-traffic-flow isolation, and hybrid approaches—and introduces a stochastic network calculus (SNC)-based analytical framework coupled with a heuristic slice planner designed for integration with the Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (Non-RT RIC). Results demonstrate that only per-flow slicing strictly guarantees individual flow latency bounds, whereas shared or hybrid schemes improve resource efficiency at the cost of degraded performance for critical flows. The proposed method operates efficiently at the Non-RT timescale, overcoming limitations inherent in conventional fixed-slicing architectures.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Stochastic Optimization
• Machine Learning: Learning on the Edge & Model Compression

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

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 comparatively analyze four RAN slicing deployment options that differ in slice sharing and per-line or per-flow isolation. Unlike prior works that focus on management architectures or resource allocation under a fixed slicing structure, this work addresses the design of RAN slicing deployment options in the presence of multiple production lines and heterogeneous industrial flows. An SNC-based analytical framework and a heuristic slice planner are used to evaluate these options in terms of per-flow delay guarantees and radio resource utilization. Results show that under resource scarcity only per-flow slicing prevents delay violations by tightly matching resources to per-flow delay targets, while slice-sharing and hybrid deployments improve aggregation efficiency at the cost of weaker protection for the most delay-critical flows. Execution-time results confirm that the planner operates at Non-RT time scales, enabling its integration within O-RAN Non-RT RIC loops.

Problem

• 5G RAN slicing
• Industry 4.0
• uRLLC
• deployment options
• heterogeneous industrial flows

Innovation

• RAN slicing
• uRLLC
• per-flow isolation
• SNC-based analysis
• O-RAN Non-RT RIC