NOMA-based 802.11n for Broadcasting Multimedia Content in Factory Automation Environments

Industry 4.0 requirements in reliability and latency are still a challenge for wireless communications systems due to the factory critical propagation scenarios. Additionally, further improvements are required in order to enhance the performance of wireless technologies in terms of reliability and latency before presenting them as a valid alternative to the wired technologies. These challenges are added to the increasing needs of bitrate to deliver multimedia content in Factory Automation (FA) environments. This paper proposes several use cases, which include video transmission and a specific technical solution based on a combination of NOMA and the IEEE 802.11n standard. The PIIY/MAC proposal is evaluated on a reference scenario based on the deployment of the typical industrial applications. Results show that NOMA-based systems offer a very promising reliability gain in comparison to classical TDMA-based systems. In fact, for the most unbalanced service combinations a PER (Packet Error Rate) improvement of more than one order of magnitude can be obtained.