Performance Study of 5G Indoor Small Cells for Industrial MEC

The Fifth-generation (5G) and future 6G are targeted for industrial environments where reliability and low latency processing are required for automation of factories. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is the emerging paradigm expected to address those requirements. In this study we utilize an Open Radio Access Network (ORAN) equipment to conduct extensive performance measurements, primarily focusing on latency and bandwidth metrics. Industrial MEC use cases require the deployment of indoor small cells capable of providing low latency communications for small coverage. In this paper, we are interested in analyzing the effectiveness of a co-deployment of MEC with the access network as promised by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) [1]. Leveraging the iperf tool, we conduct measurements both within our custom MEC platform, collocated with the gNodeB (gNB), and externally against a public iperf server deployed in the cloud. By comparing these measurements, the paper provides valuable insights into the efficiency of ORAN technology in industrial MEC environments, shedding light on its potential advantages and limitations. This empirical evaluation serves to inform future deployments and optimizations, contributing to the advancement of efficient and reliable edge computing solutions for industrial use cases.