Application Layer-Forward Error Correction Raptor Q Codes in 5G Mobile Networks for Factory of the Future

Abstract

The future communication requirements for industrial automation will differ significantly from existing technologies. Traffic in Industry 4.0 imposes real-time requirements, requiring ultra-reliable communication (URC) with high reliability and minimal latency. The demand for ultra-high reliability as high as 99.999999 percent and as low as 1 ms end-to-end latency is the major challenge of the NOMA communication system in the factory of the future. The high expectations on reliability and latency need modifications to the radio system’s baseband signal processing, medium access control (MAC) layer, and application layer to protect against packet losses. Thus, this paper investigates the utilization of Raptor Q codes, which is a type of Application Layer Forward Error Correction (AL-FEC), by developing an end-to-end system level simulator to evaluate and analyze the performance of the transmission signals based on cross-layer approach; from the physical layer (PHY), MAC layer, and application layer parameters in an indoor factory network setting. The factory is assumed to be operated with various factory robots of different speeds, from static to 10 km/h. The 5G technology relies heavily on flexible network operations. High user density, high user mobility, deployment, and coverage are all qualities that allow for this flexibility. Through extensive simulations, the results showed that the Raptor Q codes are not only able to give good results, i.e., $\text{packet}\text{reception}\text{rate}\left(\text{PRR}\right)=0.9$ of 10 m or 1.8% to 10 m or 3.4% depending on different scenarios, but are also able to meet $\text{PRR}=0.9$ in the mobility scenario at 10 km/h. Thus, the Raptor Q codes can be seen as a good candidate for obtaining results within a strict range of requirements set by URC communications for the factory of the future replacing RLNC.