5G Toolbox for Realizing Industrial Automation

Industry 4.0, a subset of the fourth industrial revolution, derives industrial automation for manufacturing sectors by setting targets and mechanisms for industrial data exchange. 5G system is considered as a communication platform that provides flexibility and wireless connectivity to support industrial automation. However, several issues are to be addressed in order for 5G NR to enable industrial automation, such as, efficient multiplexing between industrial flows i.e. maintaining QoS for critical traffic while enhancing efficiency for other traffic. In this paper, we present our view on how to solve several relevant issues, from medium access control (MAC) layer perspective. The main advantage of our solutions is that it requires very low complexity resulting in minimal changes to existing standardization specification.