In industrial monitoring and industrial IoT projects, connectivity plays a fundamental role in the overall performance of the system. In these environments, analyzing how different technologies behave in real conditions allows us to understand their impact on the reliability and response time of industrial applications. 

In this experiment, we wanted to analyze the real impact of the type of connectivity (WiFi vs. 5G) on the latency of sending data to a monitoring system. The focus is not on theoretical bandwidth, but on the real time it takes for data to arrive from the moment it is generated until it is available in the receiving system.

👉 This project, developed within the Vodafone Innovation Hub’s test bed, was part of a real-world test presented at Vodafone Innovation Day in Lisbon, in an innovation environment geared towards real industrial use cases. 

🌐 5G in industrial connectivity 

Beyond this specific experiment, the evolution of 5G in industrial environments is directly related to the need for more reliable communications, with lower latency and capable of supporting a growing number of connected devices.

The main features of 5G are as follows:

• Very low latency or response time, reaching 1 millisecond.
• Connection speeds of nearly 10 Gbps.
• Nearly 100% availability and the potential for 100% coverage.
• Connectivity for more devices per square kilometer without network congestion, with high bandwidths.
• A 90% reduction in the network’s energy consumption, with low-power devices lasting up to 10 years.

Besides, applications such as real-time industrial monitoring, industrial IoT and continuous data analysis systems require stable networks that guarantee the availability of information when it is really needed.

The 5G standard incorporates capabilities specifically designed for these types of industrial scenarios. These include enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC), massive machine-type communications (mMTC), and the ability to segment the network using network slicing, thereby tailoring connectivity to the criticality of each process.

This facilitates use cases such as continuous equipment monitoring, early anomaly detection, or the integration of distributed systems without relying exclusively on wired infrastructure.

In advanced industrial environments, the use of private 5G SA networks represents a significant shift toward digitalization and advanced automation in the factories of the future. Companies can have their own dedicated, secure, and customized network for their processes, enabling everything from secure remote control of machinery to the coordination of collaborative robots, autonomous vehicles, or smart logistics systems.

In all these cases, factors such as industrial latency, communication stability, and network reliability are critical to ensuring operational safety, production continuity, and overall system efficiency.

🔎 If you would like to learn more about the impact of 5G on industry, you can consult this comprehensive technical analysis on 5G technology applied to industrial environments.

⚙ Industrial context

These types of tests are especially relevant in Industry 4.0 environments, where monitoring systems, sensors and industrial IoT depend on reliable, low-latency communications.
In these types of environments, communication latency and stability directly influence operational decision-making.

For this reason, the main objective of the test was to compare end-to-end latency in sending data from a device to a remote server, using two types of connectivity:  

• Internet connection via 5G
• Internet connection via WiFi

🧪 Test design

This experiment was conducted while keeping all architecture constant except for the type of connectivity. 
 
A device generates data using a Python script and sends it to a demo environment via MQTT. Each message includes a generation timestamp and a reception timestamp on the server, allowing the actual latency to be calculated.. 
 
Two types of tests were performed:

• Sending data every 10 seconds
• Intensive data sending every 1 ms to try to see how it affected data processing

All tests were run over a period of 10 minutes.

The following diagram shows the complete flow of the experiment, from data generation to processing and visualization. Latency is calculated as the difference between the generation timestamp and the reception timestamp, allowing for a comparison of the behavior of end-to-end WiFi and 5G connectivity.

📝Results

The latencies observed were as follows:

🧠 Analysis

The results show that 5G technology offers significantly lower base latency than WiFi technology. Under low load conditions, the difference is clear and consistent. 
 
When the sending frequency increases, latency increases, especially in 5G. This is probably due to the appearance of internal queues, network stack limitations, and server processing, rather than the network itself. 
 
WiFi, although more stable in terms of variation, has higher baseline latency. 

The standard deviation metric allows us to evaluate latency stability, with results showing that 5G not only has lower average latency but also lower variability, especially when sending periodically every 10 seconds. 

🔬 Findings

5G demonstrates clear advantages in scenarios where industrial latency is critical, especially in periodic data transmission and IoT systems. 
 
Extremely intensive transmission reflects not only network latency, but also the overall capacity of the system. 
 
WiFi remains a valid solution, but it introduces additional latency that may be relevant in certain use cases. 

🎯 Implications 

In industrial monitoring projects, industrial IoT, or response time-sensitive systems (such as alert systems), the choice of connectivity is a key factor.
In these environments, it is not enough to analyze theoretical values: evaluating actual end-to-end latency in industrial use cases is crucial for making the right technical decisions.

Thus, for cases where latency is critical, such as Industry 4.0 projects that use real-time data, this experiment confirms that 5G is a very solid alternative to WiFi, especially when seeking more stable and predictable communication in industrial environments. 

Would you like to learn more about this and other projects? 👇