xIoT-Based Converged 5G and ICT Infrastructure
This chapter examines and explores the potential of how the capabilities of the emerging 5G cellular technologies can be integrated with a given mission-critical xIoT application (e., g., smart grid) to enable a truly converged xIoT-ICT infrastructure that would further enhance and enable the adequate support of the strict performance requirement of such an xIoT application. Since the smart grid believed to be one of the most necessitated IoT services. in this work, it has been nominated as a descriptive xIoT case. As the smart grid comprises an extensive collection of applications extended from mission-critical services which have rigorous necessities in terms of end-to-end (E2E) latency and reliability (e.g., real-time system protection and control utilizing PMU measurements) to those that require support of massive number of connected machine-to-machine (M2M) devices with relaxed latency and reliability requirements (e.g., smart meters). Based on time-to-market strategy, we identify and propose two different 5G-based business and architectural models that enable a truly converged power grid-ICT infrastructure, namely, near-term model and long-term model.