Reliable and Low-Latency Communications for Critical Infrastructures Utilizing Wireless Mesh Networks

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the applicability of wireless mesh networks as a suitable alternative to traditional mobile networks for the monitoring and protection of critical infrastructures. Present-day mobile networks have to handle a large amount of data due to the increase in the need for mobile broadband and the number of users. Therefore, monitoring critical infrastructures exerts an additional load on the existing networks. Thus, the applicability of wireless mesh networks (operating at independent frequency bands) is investigated to determine if they are capable of protecting and monitoring critical infrastructures such as smart grids. The reliability and latency of optimally tuned wireless mesh networks free of other network traffic are studied with the help of simulations based on the DECT-2020 NR standard. It is observed that reliable communications can be realized, however, the end-to-end latency of the network increases with the number of hops and re-transmissions. The user plane latency varies between \SIrange{10.55}{25.07}{ms} over five hops and between \SIrange{15.55}{38.78}{ms} over eight hops based on the size of the packet. Furthermore, there is a \SIrange{1.2}{2}{} times increment in the latency with each re-transmission. Therefore, a trade-off is necessary to achieve ultra-reliable low-latency communications utilizing wireless mesh networks for monitoring and protection of critical infrastructures.