5G-Enabled Tactile Internet Resource Provision via Software-Defined Optical Access Networks (SDOANs)

Abstract

Emerging research trends in smart healthcare, smart manufacturing, and Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) applications are based on 5G services, which can achieve ultra-reliable and low-latency communication networks. In such fields of application, haptic applications have gained importance. The invention of 5G wireless communication networks and advances in Tactile Internet (TI) technology, which provides controlled communications through the transmission of touch and actuation in real-time, have been envisioned as promising enablers of TI services. This study introduces TI-based smart hospital healthcare applications to enhance the alignment of services provided to patients. The existing telesurgery system has high communication delay and overhead, which limit its applicability. To alleviate these problems, we analyze and provide insights into the communication architecture for 5G-enabled low-latency telesurgery in a smart hospital. We then propose a new TI-software-defined optical access networking (TI-SDOANs) framework in Next-Generation Passive Optical Network 2, which includes cloud-based human-to-machine steering servers and supports multiple cloud-based applications. We further propose the implementation of an effective TI-dynamic wavelength and bandwidth allocation (TI-DWBA) resource provisioning scheme that meets the quality of service requirements of TI services. Simulation results show that the proposed scheduling schemes can significantly improve the Quality of Service (QoS) performance in terms of the packet delay, jitter, throughput and packet drop.