English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

In recent years, wireless technologies have been identified as a very attractive option for industrial and factory automation. Some of the benefits of these technologies are mobility support, reduced cabling and installation costs, reduced danger of breaking cables and less hassle with connectors. Typical application classes where wireless technologies might be used are closed-loop control involving mobile subsystems, coordination among mobile robots or autonomous vehicles, health monitoring of machines, tracking of parts and many more. Moreover, wireless technologies may be useful in factory automation systems where there is the need to dynamically connect new components to an already deployed wired communication system that cannot be reached (easily and/or reliably) with a cable. On the other hand, wireless solutions and products available today on the market are considered unsuitable for implementing distributed control applications and systems, in particular when real-time and/or reliability constraints are key issues. In fact, wireless networks are influenced by a number of factors that have to be carefully analysed before using them at the device level of factory automation systems. As an example, wireless transmissions are quite sensitive to electro-magnetic noise, obstacles, multi-path fading, etc. Industrial environments are generally very hostile and multiple types of noise may cause transmission errors, that can significantly affect the robustness. Moreover, as the wireless channel is non-deterministic and time-varying, the classical deterministic performance measures such as the worst-case transmission times should be replaced by probabilistic assessments. IEEE 802.11 is the most widely used wireless technology and several research works exist that study its suitability for the industrial environment and try to enhance the support provided to industrial traffic. Moreover, the interest of the industrial community regarding this protocol has noticeably grown since the IEEE 802.11e amendment has been incorporated into the published IEEE 802.11-2007 standard. In fact, such an amendment uses the same IEEE 802.11 physical layer, but provides two novel channel access mechanisms that support Quality of Service (QoS), namely, EDCA and HCCA. This Chapter aims at giving a summary of the many works in literature, to provide a broad overview on the current results regarding the IEEE 802.11e protocol in industrial communication, with a special 9

A Perspective on the IEEE 802.11e Protocol for the Factory Floor