5G-Based Industrial Wireless Controller: Protocol Adaptation, Prototype Development, and Experimental Evaluation

As a promising industrial wireless network technology, 5G URLLC is playing a key role in industrial control systems which employ different kinds of industrial control protocols. This leaves a significant challenge in how to adapt 5G URLLC with existing industrial control protocols and develop novel industrial wireless controllers. Motivated by this, this paper investigates the protocol adaptation and experimental evaluations for the development of a 5G-based industrial wireless controller prototype. Specifically, using the globally used industrial protocol Modbus as an example, we first deeply analyze the characteristics of the data packet format and the communication time sequence of Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP, and 5G protocols. Then, we propose a protocol resolution and conversion scheme for the protocol adaptation between Modbus RTU/Modbus TCP and 5G. Furthermore, we develop a wireless programmable logic controller (PLC) prototype system based on 5G. To evaluate the protocol adaptation scheme and the developed prototype, we perform extensive experiments to test the reliability and latency. The results demonstrate that the latency of the protocol adaptation scheme is smaller than that of protocol transparent transmission without resolution and conversion, while the reliability loss is not large. Moreover, the speed and reliability for the protocol adaptation between Modbus TCP and 5G are better than those between Modbus RTU and 5G.