Abstract
The factories of the future will be highly digitalized in order to enable flexible and interconnected manufacturing processes. Especially wireless technologies will be beneficial for industrial automation. However, the high density of metallic objects is challenging for wireless systems due to multipath fading. In order to understand the signal propagation in industrial environments, this paper provides results from a number of channel measurement campaigns funded by the German research initiative “Reliable wireless communication in the industry”. We give an overview of different measurement scenarios covering visible light communication and radio communication below 6 GHz. We analyze large and small scale parameters as well as delay statistics of the wireless channels. Finally, we discuss the importance of the results for the definition of industrial channel models.
Zusammenfassung
Um vernetzte und dennoch flexible Herstellungsprozesse zu ermöglichen, wird die Industrie der Zukunft voll von der Digitalisierung durchdrungen sein. In diesem Zusammenhang bieten insbesondere drahtlose Technologien Vorteile für die industrielle Automatisierungstechnik. Jedoch stellt die hohe Dichte an metallischen Objekten und die sich hieraus ergebende Mehrwegeausbreitung des Sendesignals mit Schwundkanälen eine große Herausforderung für den verlässlichen Einsatz von drahtlosen Übertragungssystemen im industriellen Umfeld dar. Um die Gegebenheiten der Signalausbreitung in industriellen Umgebungen zu erfassen, werden in diesem Beitrag die Ergebnisse verschiedener Kanalmesskampagnen präsentiert. Die Messkampagnen wurden durch die deutsche Forschungsinitiative „Zuverlässige drahtlose Kommunikation in der Industrie“ gefördert und decken drahtlose Kommunikation im optischen Spektrum sowie im Spektrum unterhalb von 6 GHz ab. Es werden statistische Analysen verschiedener Einflussgrößen des drahtlosen Kanals durchgeführt. Abschließend diskutieren wir die Bedeutung der Ergebnisse für die Entwicklung industrieller drahtloser Kanalmodelle.
Funding source: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
Award Identifier / Grant number: 16KIS0224
Award Identifier / Grant number: 16KIS0195
Award Identifier / Grant number: 16KIS0199K
Award Identifier / Grant number: 16KIS0266
Funding statement: Part of the research leading to these results has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the grant agreements 16KIS0224 also referred to as ParSec, 16KIS0195 also referred to as KoI, 16KIS0199K also referred to as Owicells and 16KIS0266 also referred to as HiFlecs. The cooperation between the projects was enabled by the accompanying research BZKI of the ZDKI program.
About the authors
Monique Düngen joined the corporate research department of Robert Bosch GmbH in 2012 and is currently working in the area of wireless communication with a focus on 5G mobile radio for vertical sectors. In 2016 she received her Ph.D degree in communications engineering from the Hamburg University of Technology.
Thomas Hansen received the Dipl.-Ing. (FH) degree in electrical engineering from Flensburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany in October 1998. From September 1998 until August 1999 he worked as a freelancer, developing antenna arrays for communication and radar systems. Since September 1999, Thomas Hansen is part of Corporate Research of Robert Bosch GmbH, developing antennas and frontends for industrial, multimedia and automotive applications.
Ramona Croonenbroeck received her master’s degree in 2016 after studying electrical engineering at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Since 2016 she is with the Communication Technology Institute at the same university and is currently working towards her doctoral dissertation. Her research interests cover wireless industrial communication, especially reliable physical layer concepts and industrial channel modelling.
Rüdiger Kays received his diploma and Ph. D. degrees in electrical engineering from TU Dortmund University, Germany, in 1981 and 1986, respectively. He was then with Grundig AG, Germany, where he was responsible for the company’s research and advanced development department. Since 1999, he is a professor for communications technology at TU Dortmund University. His research interests cover wireless local networks, car-to-car communication, signal processing and transmission for electronic media applications.
Bernd Holfeld joined the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany, in 2012 after completing his Dipl.-Ing. (M. Sc.) degree in Electrical Engineering at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. In 2010, he was a visiting researcher at the Institute for Telecommunications Research at UniSA, Adelaide, Australia. Bernd has been involved in several research projects on 4G and 5G radio access. His current focus is on communication protocols for industrial wireless systems.
Dennis Wieruch received the Dipl.-Ing. (M. Sc.) degree in Computer Engineering from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, in 2009. In March 2009, he joined the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Germany, as a Research Associate, where he is currently pursuing a Ph. D. degree. His research interests include wireless communications with a focus on cognitive radio, compressed sensing, software defined radio and digital signal processing. He participated in several EU and German government funded research projects.
Pablo Wilke Berenguer received the B. Sc. degree from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, in 2010, and the M. Sc. degree from Stanford University, CA, USA, in 2012, both in electrical engineering. He has been a Research Associate with the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany, since late 2012. His research interests include digital signal processing in and design of optical transmission systems incl. the mitigation of nonlinear impairments of transmitter components and multi-user MIMO processing in optical wireless communications.
Volker Jungnickel received doctorate and habilitation degrees in physics from Humboldt University Berlin in 1995 and in communications engineering from Technical University Berlin in 2015, respectively. He joined Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin in 1997 where he contributed to high-speed optical wireless communications, the first 1 Gb/s mobile radio link, the first real-time trials of LTE and coordinated multipoint trials for LTE. He is currently leading the Metro-, Access and In-house Systems group working on short-range optical technologies. He also serves as chair of the IEEE 802.15.13 task group on Multi-Gbit/s Optical Wireless Communications.
Dimitri Block received the B. Sc. in electrical engineering and the M. Sc. in information technology from the University of Applied Sciences Ostwestfalen-Lippe, in 2009 and in 2011, respectively. He is currently a research assistant with the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) of the OWL University of Applied Sciences in Lemgo. He is involved in research and optimization of coexisting radio systems in industrial automation.
Uwe Meier studied Electrical Engineering at Fachhochschule Lippe and Technical University Braunschweig, where he received his doctoral degree. During several years of industrial experience he worked on the development of radar systems and planar millimetre wave circuits. He is now with the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) of OWL University of Applied Sciences in Lemgo where he is Professor and head of the high frequency engineering group. His research interests are wireless systems, especially cognitive radio systems, radio channel characterisation and coexistence management.
Henrik Schulze received the Dipl.-Phys. degree and the Ph. D. degree (Dr. rer. nat.), both in theoretical physics, from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 1983 and 1987, respectively. From 1987 to 1993, he was with Robert Bosch GmbH in Hildesheim, Germany, where he worked on the development of modulation and channel coding for the DAB system. Since 1993, he has been a Professor of Communication Theory at the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences, Meschede, Germany. His research interests include modulation and coding for mobile and optical communication systems.
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