NR-WLAN Aggregation: Architecture for Supporting URLLC in 5G IoT Networks

The standard for 5th generation (5G) cellular mobile communications, which is referred to as New Radio (NR), has been released by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). One of the key technologies supported by NR is ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC), aiming at meeting extremely stringent requirements: data error rate of below 10−5 and layer 2 latency of below 1 ms. One of the typical use cases of URLLC is Internet of Things (IoT) e.g. factory automation. Considering the fact that Wireless LAN (WLAN) systems are already widely deployed for IoT industrial applications, the IoT system can make full use of WLAN for supporting URLLC. Therefore, system architectures should be investigated in which NR technology can be integrated into the WLAN system which is already deployed for IoT industrial applications. In this paper, three architectures are proposed. Among them, it is found that architectures with novel feature “bearer aggregation” provides better support of URLLC. One open question is discussed, and it is shown that an enhanced WLAN system which is developed by the authors can potentially address the question.