5G for the Connected World

8Critical Machine Type Communication

Zexian Li¹ and Rainer Liebhart²

¹Nokia, Espoo, Finland

²Nokia, Munich, Germany

8.1 Introduction

As outlined in Chapter 1, key differentiators between long‐term evolution (LTE) and 5G are the capability to provide ultra‐low latency and extreme high reliability connectivity service to applications. In this chapter we will describe how these features can be used for divergent use cases and most importantly what kind of solutions in the radio and core network will leverage low latency and high reliability.

With low latency we mean usually a few milliseconds (in the extreme case 1 ms) end‐to‐end (E2E) latency between client and server on the user plane. With ultra‐high reliability of at least 99.999%, 99.999 9% or even higher we mean reliability of the connection interface between device and network. Thus, reliability is an issue for keeping a wireless connection active to reach the device (note that also fronthaul and backhaul connections are relevant for device reachability) allowing for a very high packet reception rate. On the other hand, network availability is also crucial for many applications. This refers to the downtime of the network and its components such as base stations (BSs), core network elements, registers, authentication and application servers (ASs).

8.1.1 Industrial Automation

The most important and well‐known use cases requiring ultra‐low latency and extreme high reliability are remote health‐care and surgery, some industrial ...