Industry 4.0 and the digitalization of factories promise enormous benefits in terms of efficiency, productivity and sustainability. 5G private networks will deliver the required networking performance, and initial industrial deployments are showing promise.
However, modern factories or assembly halls are complex environments. Planning robust wireless connections in smart factories requires an understanding of coverage and individual channel responses. Ray-tracing-based simulation plays an important role in predicting this behavior, complementing costly and time-consuming measurement campaigns in existing real-world environments and forecasting performance in planned facilities. This digital or virtual twin model of the factory environment can help minimize the number of access points while optimizing coverage before the factory is upgraded or built.
This talk will describe a flexible ray-tracing-based workflow for analyzing coverage and communication channels in such complex and dynamic environments. Topics will include preparing realistic 3D factory models with moving elements for simulation, assessing the impact of antenna positioning on channel predictions and simulating scenarios to predict coverage and channel responses.