Det-5G: Closing the Determinism Gap in 5G-Advanced for Industrial Closed-Loop Control

Abstract

The ultra-reliable low-latency communication (uRLLC) capability of 5G has created significant opportunities for industrial wireless connectivity, yet widespread use of cellular networks for closed-loop control remains challenging. Closed-loop control requires more than low packet latency and high reliability: cyclic command/feedback exchanges must complete within predictable time bounds despite changing channel conditions, recovery transmissions, mobility, and multi-device contention. This paper introduces Deterministic-5G (Det-5G), a unified radio resource allocation framework for industrial closed-loop control. Det-5G treats the complete bidirectional control cycle as the scheduling object and combines coordinated downlink/uplink allocation, adaptive bundled transmissions, group-oriented downlink communication, and optimized multi-user uplink scheduling over 5G air-interface. Its performance is evaluated through a combination of closed-form analysis and Monte Carlo scheduling experiments, with comparisons against conventional dynamic grant-based scheduling, semi-persistent scheduling/configured grant operation, and fixed proactive repetition. The evaluation shows that Det-5G improves predictability of cycle completion, maintains the target reliability under changing link conditions, and scales more effectively to multi-device control than conventional reactive scheduling, while adapting radio resource use instead of continuously provisioning for the worst case as in fixed repetition. These characteristics make cycle-oriented scheduling a pragmatic solution for reducing the determinism gap that limits the use of 5G for closed-loop control in different verticals, especially as it evolves through 5G-Advanced toward 6G.