Case Study on Comparison of Wireless Technologies in Industrial Applications
Anagha Jayan · 2014
This paper conveys more information about communication modules like RF, Bluetooth and Zigbee in industrial applications. In this paper, an overall comparison of these modules on the basis of their industrial applications and characteristics such as standard, bandwidth, battery life, data rate, and maximum transmission range etc. I. Introduction Wireless technologies have been available for decades, and in the last several years wireless technologies have been making their way to the factory floor. This technology has been allowed for transferring data efficiently over long distances. When this wireless technology is utilized, a new world of applications is available to designers. Sensors and actuators can be added to many industrial, commercial, and entertainment automation applications. The main advantages for using a wireless solution in industrial applications are greater mobility and possibility to move devices and connect to smart phones and tablets freely without constraining cables, eliminate expensive and maintenance heavy transmission media such as flexible cables, swivels, bypassing long distances and areas where cables cannot physically fit, fast and easy installation and commissioning, high flexibility if there is a need to modify an installation, increased personnel safety by not having to be physically close to a device during configuration and maintenance, flexible human interface devices (HID),easy integration of devices into the network. Industrial plants consist of multiple devices interconnected in different ways. These varied types of devices consist of Simple data collection units (I/Os) without built-in intelligence, intelligent devices such as sensors with built-in intelligence, single-loop controllers or programmable controllers, supervisory systems used as human machine interface (HMI), data logging and supervisory control. All these types of devices are interconnected using different communication protocols that in some cases can be replaced by wireless technologies to accomplish the above listed advantages. II. Wireless Technologies In the past years, we were used the wired technologies for the communication. These technologies have the greatest drawbacks of using cable and it is impossible to use for long distance and not a reliable one also. To overcome these drawbacks, we have been moved to the wireless one. By using the wireless communication technologies, we make our communication as reliable one and cable free one. Wireless technologies are applied in various wide applications throughout the world. For communicating over the world, wireless communications communicates via satellite. In the closed environments or limited range applications like school, colleges, offices, factories, and industries, we communicate or transfer the data with the help of wireless sensor networks such as RF modem, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Zigbee etc. The primary advantages of wireless sensor networks are, - Reliable one - Authenticated one - No use of cables - Lesser cost than wired one