Wireless Sensor Networks in Industrial Automation

Leveraging Wireless Devices for Networked Control Systems in Industrial Applications

“…These systems are known as Wireless Networked Control Systems (WNCS). WNCS have lately been attracting many research efforts driven by the increasing developments and standardization such as Bluetooth, ZigBee and WiFi [7]. For the latter, its high power consumption and the short autonomy of a battery power supply are considered an important disadvantage.…”

“…It is easy to understand why to first migrate the sensor link to a wireless connection. As the actuator usually needs relative high power to drive the plant, sometimes it is not reasonable to implement a wireless connection to this link if the actuator will continue requiring a physical connection for power supply or even if the actuator lifetime will be deeply decreased in this situation [7]. To provide wireless remote monitoring capabilities for industrial controllers such as PLCs, a simple solution that has been applied is the use of serial to wireless devices.…”

“…Typically, packet losses result from transmission errors in physical network links or from buffer overflows due to congestion. Additionally, in monitoring applications there is no hard time constraints on these messages deliveries since the sampling interval is usually given in seconds to ensure a great battery lifetime [7].…”

Applying and Comparing Two Measurement Approaches for the Estimation of Indoor WiFi Coverage

“…The major technical challenges for developing industrial wireless applications can be found in, e.g., [3] and [4]. Because of the unique characteristics and technical challenges, developing wireless industrial applications requires a combination of expertise from several different disciplines, including RF design and propagation environment expertise, which is necessary to address communication challenges and RF interference problems in industrial environments [3].The harsh radio wave propagation conditions in industrial environments is often characterized by the presence of multi-path propagation, interferences from other devices, and noise generated by equipment or heavy machinery [4].…”

“…Because of the unique characteristics and technical challenges, developing wireless industrial applications requires a combination of expertise from several different disciplines, including RF design and propagation environment expertise, which is necessary to address communication challenges and RF interference problems in industrial environments [3].The harsh radio wave propagation conditions in industrial environments is often characterized by the presence of multi-path propagation, interferences from other devices, and noise generated by equipment or heavy machinery [4]. Also, link condition in industrial environments is subject to change over time due to industrial processes and activities (e.g., cars or workers moving, goods replacement).…”