Resource allocation for a multi-device URLLC network

The fifth generation of wireless cellular networks, the 5G New Radio (5G NR), is expected to support ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) as one of its primary communication services. The URLLC service of the network targets very high levels of reliability, which according to the 3GPP standards, corresponds to a block error rate of 10-9 to 10-5. Simultaneously, the networks need to guarantee very low latency, less than 1 millisecond according to the 3GPP standards. In this article, we propose an algorithm to solve the resource allocation problem, in terms of power and blocklength optimization, for a general multi-device downlink URLLC in a factory automation scenario. Our objective is to minimize the decoding-error probability at a target device, while ensuring that the rest of the devices perform under a threshold error probability. To achieve this, we propose a multi-layered encapsulation method which simplifies the resource allocation problem of multi-device networks. We also propose a general relay-assisted strategy in the last step of the multi-layered encapsulation model, which results in a remarkable improvement in the decoding-error probability of the target device. Moreover, we also propose a multiple-antenna beamforming design based resource allocation, which further improves the decoding-error-probability at the expense of higher computational complexity.