Real-time wireless networks for industrial control systems

The next generation of industrial systems (Industry 4.0) will dramatically transform manyproductive sectors, integrating emerging concepts such as Internet of Things, artificialintelligence, big data, cloud robotics and virtual reality, to name a few. Most of thesetechnologies heavily rely on the availability of communication networks able to offernearly–istantaneous, secure and reliable data transfer. In the industrial sector, these tasks are nowadays mainly accomplished by wired networks, that combine the speed ofoptical fiber media with collision–free switching technology. However, driven by the pervasive deployment of mobile devices for personal com-munications in the last years, more and more industrial applications require wireless connectivity, which can bring enormous advantages in terms of cost reduction and flex-ibility. Designing timely, reliable and deterministic industrial wireless networks is a complicated task, due to the nature of the wireless channel, intrinsically error–prone andshared among all the devices transmitting on the same frequency band. In this thesis, several solutions to enhance the performance of wireless networks employed in industrial control applications are proposed. The presented approaches differ in terms of achieved performance and target applications, but they are all characterized by an improvement over existing industrial wireless solutions in terms of timeliness, reliability and determinism. When possible, an experimental validation of the designed solutions is provided. The obtained results prove that significant performance improvements are already possible, often using commercially available devices and preserving compliance to existing standards. Future research efforts, combined with the availability of new chipsets and standards, could lead to a world where wireless links effectively replace most of the existing cables in industrial environments, as it is already the case in the consumer market