5G Control Routing by Emergency Stop Group to Isolate UPF Failures
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Solution Overview
Problem
When a 5G network is applied to an industrial system, the User Plane Function (UPF) becomes a single point of failure, leading to weak fault tolerance, as all PLCs rely on it for data transfer, causing all lines to stop functioning if it fails.
Innovation Solution
A communication control system with multiple control devices that calculate emergency stop groups and associate them with UPF destinations, creating a destination conversion table to ensure data is routed through redundant UPFs, preventing a single point of failure by limiting the impact of a UPF failure to specific emergency stop groups.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If a single UPF is used for data transfer in a 5G network applied to an industrial system, then the network structure is simplified, but the fault tolerance deteriorates because the UPF becomes a single point of failure
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the network traffic by dividing controlled devices into multiple emergency stop groups, where each group is assigned to a different UPF. This segmentation ensures that a failure in one UPF only affects one emergency stop group rather than the entire network, thus improving fault tolerance while maintaining a relatively simple network structure.
2Reliability
If multiple UPFs are deployed to improve fault tolerance, then the reliability improves, but the device complexity increases due to the need for multiple UPFs and routing management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating destination conversion tables in each control device that contain UPF destination information specific to each emergency stop group. This allows each control device to have customized routing information for different groups, enabling intelligent local routing decisions without requiring complex centralized management of multiple UPFs.
3Device complexity
If all PLCs rely on a single UPF for data transfer, then the communication path is simplified, but the system productivity deteriorates when the UPF fails as all lines must stop
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-establishing destination conversion tables that map emergency stop groups to specific UPFs before any failure occurs. This pre-configuration ensures that when a UPF fails, control devices can immediately switch to alternative UPFs using the pre-stored routing information, maintaining system productivity without requiring complex real-time rerouting decisions.
Data Source
AI summary
A communication control system (500) includes a plurality of control devices (100) that communicate via a 5G network and a plurality of controlled devices (200) respectively controlled by the plurality of control devices (100). A control device (100) acquires, from emergency stop group information, emergency stop group numbers of emergency stop groups to which the control devices (100) belong. Then, the control device (100) calculates the total number of emergency stop groups, and creates slice information for connecting to the same number of UPFs as the total number of emergency stop groups. The control device (100) registers itself with the 5G network, acquires UPF destination information, which is destination information to UPFs (410), and stores, in a destination conversion table, information in which each emergency stop group number is associated with a destination UPF without duplication of a destination UPF (410) between the emergency stop groups.