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

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

Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks

WiMAX Basics From Deployments to PHY Improvements

© ASEE 2014WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is an emerging broadband wireless technology for providing Last mile solutions for supporting higher bandwidth and multiple service classes with various quality of service requirement. The unique architecture of the WiMAX MAC and PHY layers that uses OFDMA to allocate multiple channels with different modulation schema and multiple time slots for each channel allows better adaptation of heterogeneous user’s requirements. The main architecture in WiMAX uses PMP (Point to Multipoint), Mesh mode or the new MMR (Mobile Multi hop Mode) deployments where scheduling and multicasting have different approaches. In PMP SS (Subscriber Station) connects directly to BS (Base Station) in a single hop route so channel conditions adaptations and supporting QoS for classes of services is the key points in scheduling, admission control or multicasting, while in Mesh networks SS connects to other SS Stations or to the BS in a multi hop routes, the MMR mode extends the PMP mode in which the SS connects to either a relay station (RS) or to Bs. Both MMR and Mesh uses centralized or distributed scheduling with multicasting schemas based on scheduling trees for routing. In this paper a broad study is conducted About WiMAX technology PMP and Mesh deployments from main physical layers features with differentiation of MAC layer features to scheduling and multicasting approaches in both modes of operations

The radio spectrum : opportunities and challenges for the developing world

The radio spectrum is a major component of the telecommunications infrastructure that underpins the information society. Spectrum management, however, has not kept up with major changes in technology, business practice, and economic policy during the past two decades. Traditional spectrum management practice is predicated on the spectrum being a limited resource that must be apportioned among uses and users by government administration. For many years this model worked well, but more recently the spectrum has come under pressure from rapid demand growth for wireless services and changing patterns of use. This has led to growing technical and economic inefficiencies, as well as obstacles to technological innovation. Two alternative approaches are being tried, one driven by the market (spectrum property rights) and another driven by technology innovation (commons). Practical solutions are evolving that combine some features of both. Wholesale replacement of current practice is unlikely, but the balance between administration, property rights, and commons is clearly shifting. Although the debate on spectrum management reform is mainly taking place in high-income countries, it is deeply relevant to developing countries as well.Broadcast and Media,Roads&Highways,Climate Change,Montreal Protocol,ICT Policy and Strategies

Satellite-enabled interactive education: scenarios and systems architectures

There are specific sectors of the economy that can benefit from satellite-based tele-education. Areas, such as maritime and agriculture, share common needs for both broadband connectivity at remote geographical areas that cannot otherwise be covered, and for innovative content for tele-education purposes. Furthermore, each area has special requirements with regard to the type of content to be delivered. In this paper we propose a set of architectural designs and case scenarios that will realise such interactive end-to-end education systems based on satellite communications. Services requirements in this setting are also identified and discussed