In the evolving landscape of Industry 4.0, the integration of advanced wireless technologies into manufacturing processes holds the promise of unprecedented connectivity and efficiency. In particular, the data transmission in a heavy industry environment needs stable connectivity with mobile operators. This paper deals with the performance study of 4G and 5G mobile signal coverage within a complex factory environment. For this purpose, a cost-effective and portable measurement setup was realized and used to provide long-term measurement campaigns monitoring and recording several key parameter indicators (KPIs) in 4G/5G downlink and upload. To support the reproducibility of the provided study and other research activities, the measured dataset is publicly available for download. Among others findings, the obtained results show how the performance of 4G/5G is influenced by a heavy industry environment and of the time of day on the network load.

Department of Radio Electronics Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication Brno University of Technology Technicka 3082 12 616 00 Brno Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Nakimuli W., Garcia-Reinoso J., Sierra-Garcia J.E., Serrano P., Fernández I.Q. Deployment and Evaluation of an Industry 4.0 Use Case over 5G. IEEE Commun. Mag. 2021;59:14–20. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.001.2001104. DOI

Temesvári Z.M., Maros D., Kádár P. Review of Mobile Communication and the 5G in Manufacturing. Procedia Manuf. 2019;32:600–612. doi: 10.1016/j.promfg.2019.02.259. DOI

Haq I., Soomro J.A., Mazhar T., Ullah I., Shloul T.A., Ghadi Y.Y., Ullah I., Saad A., Tolba A. Impact of 3G and 4G Technology Performance on Customer Satisfaction in the Telecommunication Industry. Electronics. 2023;12:1697. doi: 10.3390/electronics12071697. DOI

El-Saleh A.A., Alhammadi A., Shayea I., Hassan W.H., Honnurvali M.S., Daradkeh Y.I. Measurement analysis and performance evaluation of mobile broadband cellular networks in a populated city. Alex. Eng. J. 2023;66:927–946. doi: 10.1016/j.aej.2022.10.052. DOI

Rodriguez I., Mogensen R.S., Fink A., Raunholt T., Markussen S., Christensen P.H., Berardinelli G., Mogensen P., Schou C., Madsen O. An experimental framework for 5G wireless system integration into industry 4.0 applications. Energies. 2021;14:4444. doi: 10.3390/en14154444. DOI

Burmeister F., Schwarzenberg N., Höβler T., Fettweis G. Measuring Time-Varying Industrial Radio Channels for D2D Communications on AGVs; Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC); Nanjing, China. 29 March–1 April 2021; pp. 1–7. DOI

Fink A., Mogensen R.S., Rodriguez I., Kolding T., Karstensena A., Pocovi G. Empirical Performance Evaluation of EnterpriseWi-Fi for IIoT Applications Requiring Mobility; Proceedings of the European Wireless 2021, 26th European Wireless Conference; Verona, Italy. 10–12 November 2021; pp. 1–8.

Rekoputra N.M., Tseng C.W., Wang J.T., Liang S.H., Cheng R.G., Li Y.F., Yang W.H. Implementation and Evaluation of 5G MEC-Enabled Smart Factory. Electronics. 2023;12:1310. doi: 10.3390/electronics12061310. DOI

Lyczkowski E., Munz H.A., Kiess W., Joshi P. Performance of Private LTE on the Factory Floor; Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops); Dublin, Ireland. 7–11 June 2020; pp. 1–6. DOI

Schmieder M., Eichler T., Wittig S., Peter M., Keusgen W. Measurement and Characterization of an Indoor Industrial Environment at 3.7 and 28 GHz; Proceedings of the 2020 14th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP); Copenhagen, Denmark. 15–20 March 2020; pp. 1–5. DOI

Mi H., Ai B., He R., Wu T., Zhou X., Zhong Z., Zhang H., Chen R. Multi-Scenario Millimeter Wave Channel Measurements and Characteristic Analysis in Smart Warehouse at 28 GHz. Electronics. 2023;12:3373. doi: 10.3390/electronics12153373. DOI

Raida V., Svoboda P., Koglbauer M., Rupp M. On the Stability of RSRP and Variability of Other KPIs in LTE Downlink–An Open Dataset; Proceedings of the GLOBECOM 2020–2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference; Taipei, Taiwan. 7–11 December 2020; pp. 1–6. DOI

Raida V., Svoboda P., Rupp M. Real World Performance of LTE Downlink in a Static Dense Urban Scenario–An Open Dataset; Proceedings of the GLOBECOM 2020–2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference; Taipei, Taiwan. 7–11 December 2020; pp. 1–6. DOI

Mahmud I., Lubna T., Cho Y.Z. Performance evaluation of MPTCP on simultaneous use of 5G and 4G networks. Sensors. 2022;22:7509. doi: 10.3390/s22197509. PubMed DOI PMC

Kousias K., Rajiullah M., Caso G., Ali U., Alay O., Brunstrom A., Nardis L.D., Neri M., Benedetto M.G.D. A Large-Scale Dataset of 4G, NB-IoT, and 5G Non-Standalone Network Measurements. IEEE Commun. Mag. 2023:1–7. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.011.2200707. DOI

GitHub Measurement of 4G/5G Mobile Signal Coverage in a Heavy Industry Environment—The Dataset. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://github.com/polak-l/4G-5G-Mobile-Signal-Coverage-in-a-Factory.

Implementation and Development of 5G Networks in the Czech Republic. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://www.dataplan.info/img_upload/7bdb1584e3b8a53d337518d988763f8d/implementace-a-rozvoj-siti-5g-v-cr-en.pdf.

Mohamed R., Zemouri S., Verikoukis C. Performance Evaluation and Comparison between SA and NSA 5G Networks in Indoor Environment; Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking (MeditCom); Athens, Greece. 7–10 September 2021; pp. 112–116. DOI

HP HP ProDesk 400 G6 Mini PC. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://support.hp.com/sk-en/document/c06706059.

QUECTEL RM502QAEAA-M20-SGASA; IoT/M2M-Optimized 5G M.2 Module. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://www.soselectronic.com/en/products/quectel/rm502qaeaa-m20-sgasa-1-347566.

QUECTEL PCIECARDEVB-KIT; Evaluation Board for RM500Q 5G Module. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://www.soselectronic.com/en/products/quectel/pciecardevb-kit-1-337570.

Shakir Z., Mjhool A.Y., Al-Thaedan A., Al-Sabbagh A., Alsabah R. Key performance indicators analysis for 4 G-LTE cellular networks based on real measurements. Int. J. Inf. Technol. 2023;15:1347–1355. doi: 10.1007/s41870-023-01210-0. DOI

3GPP LTE; Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical Layer; Measurements (3GPP TS 36.214 Version 14.2.0 Release 14) 2017. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/136200_136299/136214/14.02.00_60/ts_136214v140200p.pdf.

Rangeful What Is RSSI, SINR, RSRP, RSRQ? How Does This Affect Signal Quality? [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://www.rangeful.com/what-is-rssi-sinr-rsrp-rsrq-how-does-this-affect-signal-quality/

Mir U., Nuaymi L. Comparison of Policy Realization Strategies for LTE Networks; Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall); Quebec City, QC, Canada. 3–6 September 2012; pp. 1–6. DOI

Milos J., Polak L., Hanus S., Kratochvil T. Wi-Fi influence on LTE downlink data and control channel performance in shared frequency bands. Radioengineering. 2017;26:201–210. doi: 10.13164/re.2017.0201. DOI

Tajmac-ZPS a.s. [(accessed on 4 February 2024)]. Available online: https://www.tajmac-zps.cz/tajmac-group/

Japertas S., Grimaila V. Mobile signal path losses in microcells behind buildings. Radioengineering. 2017;26:191–197. doi: 10.13164/re.2017.0191. DOI

Tekovic A., Bonefacic D., Sisul G., Nad R. Interference analysis between mobile radio and digital terrestrial television in the digital dividend spectrum. Radioengineering. 2017;26:211–220. doi: 10.13164/re.2017.0211. DOI

Nguyen N.L., Tu L.T., Nguyen T.N., Nguyen P.L.T., Nguyen Q.S. Performance on cognitive broadcasting networks employing Fountain codes and maximal ratio transmission. Radioengineering. 2023;32:1–10. doi: 10.13164/re.2023.0001. DOI

Bipon A.A., Osman A., Islam M.S., Asyhari A.T., Abozariba R. Pathfinder: End-to-End Automation of Coverage Mapping of 4G/5G Networks at Street Level; Proceedings of the 2023 20th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON); Madrid, Spain. 11–14 September 2023; pp. 375–377. DOI

Zhang L., Chu X., Zhai M. Machine Learning-Based Integrated Wireless Sensing and Positioning for Cellular Network. IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 2023;72:5501011. doi: 10.1109/TIM.2022.3224513. DOI

Rochman M.I., Sathya V., Fernandez D., Nunez N., Ibrahim A.S., Payne W., Ghosh M. A comprehensive analysis of the coverage and performance of 4G and 5G deployments. Comput. Netw. 2023;237:110060. doi: 10.1016/j.comnet.2023.110060. DOI

Al-Thaedan A., Shakir Z., Mjhool A.Y., Alsabah R., Al-Sabbagh A., Nembhard F., Salah M. A machine learning framework for predicting downlink throughput in 4G-LTE/5G cellular networks. Int. J. Inf. Technol. 2024;16:651–657. doi: 10.1007/s41870-023-01678-w. DOI