Multi-Connectivity Management for Mobile Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications

Recent mission critical wireless applications, such as emergency stop and safety application protocols (e.g., PROFIsafe), require ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) technologies to ensure error-free message transmission with hard real-time requirements. Multi-connectivity (MC) has emerged as a promising approach to enable URLLC in 5G. Applying MC in mobile communications poses multiple technical challenges, such as advanced handover (HO) schemes handling multiple links in parallel, highly dynamic link optimization, avoiding massive link drops due to fading and shadowing, and optimizing radio resource allocation/consumption. To address these challenges we propose an MC management scheme based on maximum ratio combining (MRC) for mobile communications in industrial scenarios. We compare the performance with existing HO schemes for Rayleigh fading channel conditions using extensive simulations. Compared to existing approaches, the results show improvements in achievable signal to noise ratio, link utilization, data rate, and availability.