Wireless Technologies in Factory Automation
Aurel Buda, Volker Schuermann, F. Joerg · InTech eBooks · 2010
Industrial environments are highly demanding for the utilisation of wireless communication systems. However, on the basis of suitable adaptations and performance enhancing strategies several applications in factory automation can already be served by radio solutions. The current state of the art reliably supports update times of about 10 ms on application layer. First standards for the domain of factory automation based on the PHY layer of Bluetooth can be expected in 2010. Due to the huge deployment of wireless technologies, using the 2.45 GHz ISM band, either in automation and IT, the problem of interferences, caused by coexisting devices, increases. In order to guarantee a reliable communication, even for time critical applications, a plant wide coexistence management is absolutely essential. By using other frequency ranges, the emerging UWB technologies give a great potential, to ease these coexistence problems. Furthermore they offer the possibility of addressing applications with temporal requirements of about 1 ms and below, because of their extreme short symbol durations. The research on UWB for industrial applications, especially factory automation, has just started. The upcoming years are going to reveal, whether UWB will enter into the domain of factory automation or not.