Wireless user requirements for the factory workcell

Abstract

Wireless communication is becoming crucial to advanced manufacturing. Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing depend on networked industrial automation systems. The term Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been used to describe the deployment of interconnected machines, sensors, and actuators within modernized factories. The adoption of wireless systems is essential to these IIoT deployments. Wireless automation significantly reduces capital investment costs including conduit, cables, networking equipment, and labor of installation. To enable the adoption of wireless systems at the factory-floor level, wireless requirements must be established to realize the benefits of wireless communication systems within those factories. One challenge is that existing wireless standards lack technical specifications that support low-latency and high-reliability communication for factory applications. Additionally, requirements for such capabilities are published or advertised without validation of said requirements. Often, requirements published by standards development organizations appear excessively strict and unvalidated by empirical study. Moreover, those requirements ignore the capabilities of the applications to use their own intelligence to compensate for lost reliability in the network. This report analyzes existing wireless user requirements stated by industry organizations and it produces a combined perspective on wireless user requirements for the factory workcell with supporting rationale.

A collaborative robot work-cell testbed for industrial wireless communications

“…18. 2 Windows manages such a connection using a proprietary application protocol for Terminal Server services, which is known as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). RDP uses the ISO Transport Service on top of the TCP (TPKT) protocol in the transport layer.…”

“…As industrial plants are complex cyber-physical systems (CPS), general wireless communication metrics cannot fully meet the need of comprehensively evaluating wireless impact onto manufacturing activities which are closely related to production efficiency and operation safety. Among the first attempts, standard development organizations (SDO) have proposed multiple classification methods of identifying different industrial communication use cases and their specific performance requirements, e.g., latency and reliability metrics [2]. Measurement sciences that assess wireless techniques in support of manufacturing practices are essential to the success of industrial wireless communications [3].…”

Challenges Associated with Implementing 5G in Manufacturing

“…In accordance with European law, the radio spectrum is awarded to a technology and is applied in a technology neutral manner, this means that licensees may use the radio spectrum as they see fit provided that they comply with the relevant applicable harmonized standards in the band in which they communicate. In Ireland, radio frequencies are treated as a national resource and their licensing is managed by the national communications Regulator, ComReg [33][34][35][36][37].…”

Optimization of 5G Networks for Smart Logistics

“…5G is a technology that has mainly been developed around verticals, such as vehicular communications, entertainment or Industry 4.0. Smart-Logistics [17]) are usually considered a part of Industry 4.0; but there are specific differences with the usual Industry 4.0 scenario: the Factory of the Future [18,19]. As compiled in [20], there are several different scenarios in Smart Logistics: freighting, delivery, warehousing, etc.…”