URLLC-Based Multi-Hop Communication Using DECT-2020 NR

DECT-2020 New Radio (NR) is a Radio Interface Technology (RIT) introduced by ETSI for massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) use cases. A single DECT-2020 NR Radio Device (RD) in Fixed Termination (FT) mode announces radio resources for the connected RDs in Portable Termination (PT) mode. An RD can also operate in both modes simultaneously as an FT/PT. An RD in FT mode is responsible for packet routing for the connected radio devices. However, for multi-hop communication, RDs in FT mode flood the packet, which utilizes more network resources and introduces additional latency. In this paper, we propose a routing procedure for URLLC-based multihop communication using the MAC layer and convergence layer functionalities of DECT-2020 NR. Moreover, we formulate the optimization problem for optimal path selection based on userplane latency, which is our previous contribution to the ETSI self-evaluation technical report of DECT-2020 NR and propose a graph theory-based solution. The investigations demonstrate that an improvement of up to 15 % in throughput and a reduction of up to 15 % in end-to-end latency is observed in comparison with the standard flooding procedure.