Selective multi-hop relaying for ultra-reliable communication in a factory environment

Evolving 5G cellular communication is envisioned to enable connectivity for a wide range of new use cases. The focus on mission-critical communications, such as factory automation, public safety and vehicular safety applications presses the demand for ultra-reliable communication. In this paper, we investigate by various means of multi-hop relaying schemes to improve the reliable communication in a factory environment. Impacts due to half- and full-duplex operation at relay nodes are studied together with resource allocation. No retransmissions are considered and the relaying schemes are limited to two hops to meet the low latency constraint. Performance evaluations in a factory scenario are shown. We illustrate that in a network of uncoordinated cells one can exploit the varying fading profiles and can improve the offered reliable rate using multi-hop communication.