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Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) have recently emerged as appealing communication systems in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). Particularly, they proved effective in typical IoT applications such as environmental monitoring and smart metering. Such networks, however, have a great potential also in the industrial scenario and, hence, in the context of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which represents a dramatically growing field of application. In this paper we focus on a specific LPWAN, namely, LoRaWAN, and provide an assessment of its performance for typical IIoT employments such as those represented by indoor industrial monitoring applications. In detail, after a general description of LoRaWAN, we discuss how to set some of its parameters in order to achieve the best performance in the considered industrial scenario. Subsequently we present the outcomes of a performance assessment, based on realistic simulations, aimed at evaluating the behavior of LoRaWAN for industrial monitoring applications. Moreover, the paper proposes a comparison with the IEEE 802.15.4 network protocol, which is often adopted in similar application contexts. The obtained results confirm that LoRaWAN can be considered as a strongly viable opportunity, since it is able to provide high reliability and timeliness, while ensuring very low energy consumption.

In the last years, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs (WLANs) have proved their effectiveness for a wide range of real-time industrial communication applications. Nonetheless, the introduction of the important IEEE 802.11n amendment, which is commonly implemented in commercial devices, has not been adequately addressed in this operational framework yet. IEEE 802.11n encompasses several enhancements at both physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers that may bring considerable improvements to the performance of WLANs deployed in real-time industrial communication systems. To this regard, in this paper, we present a thorough investigation of the most important IEEE 802.11n features, addressing in particular, specific performance indicators such as timeliness and reliability, which are crucial for industrial communication systems. To this aim, after an accurate theoretical analysis, we implemented a suitable experimental setup and carried out several measurement sessions to obtain an exhaustive performance assessment. The outcomes of these experiments, on one hand, revealed that the adoption of IEEE 802.11n can actually provide significant improvements to the performance of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN in the industrial communication scenario. On the other hand, the assessment allowed to select, among the various options of IEEE 802.11n, the parameter settings which may ensure the best behavior in this specific (and demanding) field of application.