5G for Industry 4.0
operational technology
networks
A comparison of the features and application of 5G and
Wi-Fi 6 for manufacturing, production and supply chain use
cases
March 2021
Table of Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1
Comparison of Wi-Fi and 5G mobile ............................................................................... 2
Overview ............................................................................................................................ 2
Mobility ............................................................................................................................... 6
Device capacity .................................................................................................................. 7
Interference and reliability .................................................................................................. 8
Channel/ carrier aggregation for high bandwidth services .................................................. 9
Over the air security and privacy ...................................................................................... 10
Device identity .................................................................................................................. 11
Application of Wi-Fi and 5G to key manufacturing use cases .................................... 12
Product Build & Quality ..................................................................................................... 12
Factory Efficiency ............................................................................................................. 14
Closing remarks ............................................................................................................. 18
Revision history ............................................................................................................. 18
1
Introduction
Manufacturers, supply chain companies and other enterprises are increasingly looking at mobile
networks to provide flexible enterprise grade industrial connectivity. Where once mobile networks
were the domain of 'road warriors' these are now displacing wired and Wi-Fi networks as the
connectivity of choice across the broad range of industrial use cases due to the ability to deliver an
unrivalled balance of capacity, bandwidth, flexibility and security. Wi-Fi is well established within
the enterprise IT network environment, but, for the operational technology network that delivers
connectivity for the 24x7 production line, warehousing and logistics systems it is necessary to look
instead to 5G to support digitisation across the wide range of manufacturing and supply chain use
cases.
Whilst Wi-Fi networks provide greater flexibility over traditional wired networks, these networks
lack support for mobility and have bandwidth, scalability and signal propagation challenges
compared with today's mobile networks. Wi-Fi is often the default choice for flexible enterprise IT,
however, 4G and 5G mobile technologies are much better suited to the operational technology
network, providing a more suitable technical platform for high volume, high reliability, always on
manufacturing, production and logistics solutions in industrial environments. In particular
• Mobile standards for 5G and previous generations from 3GPP ensure a higher level of
consistency, interoperability and certification for devices compared with Wi-Fi;
• Mobile networks deliver highest levels of data security and privacy through more advanced
encryption techniqes, confidentiality of key exchange processes with SIM and embedded
SIM cards, the design of the 'air interface' and robust provisioning and authentication
processes;
• The Release 16 features for Ultra-Reliable, Low-Latency Communications deliver latency
over the air of 900 micro-seconds to 1 milli-second, substantially better than available even
with Wi-Fi 6E;
• 5G networks support Time Sensitive Networking providing support for time-critical functions
and interworking between the mobile and wired Ethernet network;
• Quality of Service support is available with 5G networks in the form of guaranteed QoS;
• 5G provides both stand alone and PLMN integrated Non-public network services offering
seamless mobility and handover for Connected Industrial Manufacturing facilities,
warehouse and logistics;
• Support for a wide range of licensed spectrum with 5G enables a higher certainty of service
and bandwidth, with additional support for consistent use of unlicensed spectrum with 5G
NRU.
Wi-Fi is sometimes considered as a deployment option for industrial use cases because of
perceived ease, cost and wide ranges of device and network products. However, often the
decision to use Wi-Fi is made without a complete assessment of the particular demands of
Industry 4.0 use cases, or, is based on limited trials that cannot develop to scale for the operational
technology network. Recent Wi-Fi technologies including Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 promise the delivery
of significant bandwidth gains over earlier generations of Wi-Fi networks. The headline throughput
rates are, however, rarely achieved or achievable in Industry 4.0 deployments because of the
complex physical environment and user and application demands. And, a Wi-Fi network that is
suitable for providing email connectivity will not have the appropriate characteristics to support
industrial control processes that are reliant on consistent low latency and high reliability
connectivity.
2
It is also expected that a wide range of solutions for Industry 4.0 mobile network deployments will
be available for 5G based on a diversification of the equipment supply industry enabled by 'open
networking' and open source initiatives. The O-RAN alliance
1
particularly is actively enabling a
wider supplier ecosystem with defined architectures and standards to ensure interoperability
between different suppliers and variants of network equipment subsystems. These initiatives will
also deliver greater levels of plug-and-play interoperability within the network and between
networks and devices.
This paper explores the technical and operational differences between Wi-Fi and 4G/5G mobile
networks and then reviews a broad range of manufacturing and supply chain related use cases for
the application of these connectivity options. It is hoped that manufacturing and supply chain
companies reviewing technology options for Industry 4.0 will see that 5G networks, whether
supplied by mobile network operators or standalone, provides the best choice for the Industry 4.0
operational technology network with support over a wide range of use cases. In time it is likely that
manufacturing and supply chain companies will consolidate wireless networks and due to the
advantages offered by 4G and 5G mobile networks it is expected that these will become the
exclusive wireless technology in many manufacturing and supply chain enterprises.
Comparison of Wi-Fi and 5G mobile
Overview
Both Wi-Fi and 5G mobile are based on mature technology standards, with clear product
evolutions. Current Wi-Fi deployments will typically be based on Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 and newer
deployments Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6.
Version /
IEEE
Standard
When
standardised
Bands
Channel
width (MHz)
Typical
Coverage
2
Maximum
Devices
3
Wi-Fi 4
IEEE 802.11n
2007
2.4 GHz & 5
GHz
20, 40
< 50 metres
indoors
< 100
metres
outdoors
256
Wi-Fi 5
2013
5 GHz
20, 40, 80,
< 50 metres
indoors
512
1
https://www.o-ran.org
2
Some Wi-Fi access point equipment supports external antennas enabling coverage to be extended further or focused in specific areas
3
Per access point based on enterprise grade access points from the Cisco Meraki product line
https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/WiFi_Basics_and_Best_Practices/Approximating_Maximum_Clients_per_Access_Point
3
IEEE
802.11ac
160 (optional)
< 100
metres
outdoors
Wi-Fi 6
IEEE
802.11ax
2020
2.4 GHz & 5
GHz
6 GHz (future)
20, 40, 80,
160
< 50 metres
indoors
< 100
metres
outdoors
1024
Table 1. Comparison of Wi-Fi versions
Wi-Fi channel width often appears generous but for any enterprise deployment realistically only 20
MHz channels are usable in the 2.4 GHz band and 80 MHz channels in the 5 GHz band due to the
requirement to reuse frequencies for capacity and coverage purposes. As discussed later Wi-Fi
channels are also shared for both uplink and downlink traffic, which introduces additional
contention for devices with different uplink/ downlink requirements.
5G characteristic
Value
Data rate
Peak
4
Downlink: 20 Gb/s Uplink: 10 Gb/s
User experience
5
(low band)
Downlink: 100 Mb/s Uplink: 50 Mb/s
Spectral efficiency
Peak
Downlink: 30 bit/s/Hz Uplink: 15 bit/s/Hz
Average
Downlink: 3.3 ~ 9 bit/s/Hz Uplink: 1.6 ~ 6.75 bit/s/Hz
Area traffic
capacity
10 Mbit/s/m
2
Latency
User plane
1 ms ~ 4 ms
Control plane
20 ms
Connection density
1,000,000 devices per km
2
4
Achievable using high band (millimetre wave) spectrum
5
In low band spectrum