15,346 research outputs found
Survey on wireless technology trade-offs for the industrial internet of things
Aside from vast deployment cost reduction, Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (IWSAN) introduce a new level of industrial connectivity. Wireless connection of sensors and actuators in industrial environments not only enables wireless monitoring and actuation, it also enables coordination of production stages, connecting mobile robots and autonomous transport vehicles, as well as localization and tracking of assets. All these opportunities already inspired the development of many wireless technologies in an effort to fully enable Industry 4.0. However, different technologies significantly differ in performance and capabilities, none being capable of supporting all industrial use cases. When designing a network solution, one must be aware of the capabilities and the trade-offs that prospective technologies have. This paper evaluates the technologies potentially suitable for IWSAN solutions covering an entire industrial site with limited infrastructure cost and discusses their trade-offs in an effort to provide information for choosing the most suitable technology for the use case of interest. The comparative discussion presented in this paper aims to enable engineers to choose the most suitable wireless technology for their specific IWSAN deployment
Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment
In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in
the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing
technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the
increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of
wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container
terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual
effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality
of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can
be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most
systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors,
but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the
reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and
what remains to be addressed in the future
Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions
Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to
address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information
flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs
offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers,
involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems.
SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the
grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises
in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the
tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things
(IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the
generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by
incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as
well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such
devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG
systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes
of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues,
challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems
Enabling Communication Technologies for Automated Unmanned Vehicles in Industry 4.0
Within the context of Industry 4.0, mobile robot systems such as automated
guided vehicles (AGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are one of the major
areas challenging current communication and localization technologies. Due to
stringent requirements on latency and reliability, several of the existing
solutions are not capable of meeting the performance required by industrial
automation applications. Additionally, the disparity in types and applications
of unmanned vehicle (UV) calls for more flexible communication technologies in
order to address their specific requirements. In this paper, we propose several
use cases for UVs within the context of Industry 4.0 and consider their
respective requirements. We also identify wireless technologies that support
the deployment of UVs as envisioned in Industry 4.0 scenarios.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl
A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks
In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs
Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks
In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge,
and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor
Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system
that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining
certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control,
learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and
WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new
opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields
which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be
the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path
between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the
advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of
articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a
range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant
to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core
problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity,
localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the
existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from
robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in
the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature,
and identify topics that require more research attention in the future
SymbioCity: Smart Cities for Smarter Networks
The "Smart City" (SC) concept revolves around the idea of embodying
cutting-edge ICT solutions in the very fabric of future cities, in order to
offer new and better services to citizens while lowering the city management
costs, both in monetary, social, and environmental terms. In this framework,
communication technologies are perceived as subservient to the SC services,
providing the means to collect and process the data needed to make the services
function. In this paper, we propose a new vision in which technology and SC
services are designed to take advantage of each other in a symbiotic manner.
According to this new paradigm, which we call "SymbioCity", SC services can
indeed be exploited to improve the performance of the same communication
systems that provide them with data. Suggestive examples of this symbiotic
ecosystem are discussed in the paper. The dissertation is then substantiated in
a proof-of-concept case study, where we show how the traffic monitoring service
provided by the London Smart City initiative can be used to predict the density
of users in a certain zone and optimize the cellular service in that area.Comment: 14 pages, submitted for publication to ETT Transactions on Emerging
Telecommunications Technologie
To mesh or not to mesh: flexible wireless indoor communication among mobile robots in industrial environments
Mobile robots such as automated guided vehicles become increasingly important in industry as they can greatly increase efficiency. For their operation such robots must rely on wireless communication, typically realized by connecting them to an existing enterprise network. In this paper we motivate that such an approach is not always economically viable or might result in performance issues. Therefore we propose a flexible and configurable mixed architecture that leverages on mesh capabilities whenever appropriate. Through experiments on a wireless testbed for a variety of scenarios, we analyse the impact of roaming, mobility and traffic separation and demonstrate the potential of our approach
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