A Joint Industrial-Network Simulator for Leveraging Automation in 5G Private Networks

Abstract:
The combination of emerging industrial technologies and 5G communication networks will enable new exciting applications, such as human-robot interaction, collaborative robots and industrial metaverse. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques become essential to manage dynamic and complex industrial environments and to customize the network operations to the specific characteristics of modern factories. Online training of ML communication network models poses challenges and risks that working industrial environments cannot afford, e.g., failures or interruptions due to misconfiguration of the network. In this demo, we propose a complex system level simulator that includes both an accurate replication of industrial environments and a network simulator suited for testing advanced ML techniques for network automation in industrial facilities. We demonstrate two distinct use cases where ML enables the adaptation of network resource allocation to the dynamics of industrial environments.