Generic remote communication systems for the factories of the future

This paper reports on the benefits of the remote communication systems and presents two prototype systems for communication with microprocessor based machines and devices including household appliances. The wireless prototype version can also be used in remote and wireless programming of any device with a microprocessor or microcontroller. It is a known fact that the researchers often become too embraced with technical breakthroughs and forget about communicating with the audience for whom the findings of their research is intended. To this end, initial emphasis is on the benefits of the systems, but later in the paper the technical merits of the research work are explained. The prime aim of the project has been to develop the know-how for remote programming, control and up-dating of programs in microcontroller based devices using wired and wireless techniques. An earlier wireless communication system using laser encapsulation techniques developed for a factory of the future site [1] was revisited with a view to incorporate the latest technologies where appropriate. The earlier system adopting Code Division Multi Access with a Pseudo Random Noise Spectrum (CDMA-PRNS) incorporating wideband Spread Spectrum (SS) using Hierarchical Genetic Algorithm (HGA) was found to provide a basis for establishing a working Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) for many applications including in the manufacturing, where noise has been a problem for their use

Characterizing the UAV-to-Machine UWB Radio Channel in Smart Factories

In this work, the results of Ultra-Wideband air-to-ground measurements carried out in a real-world factory environment are presented and discussed. With intelligent industrial deployments in mind, we envision a scenario where the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle can be used as a supplementary tool for factory operation, optimization and control. Measurements address narrow band and wide band characterization of the wireless radio channel, and can be used for link budget calculation, interference studies and time dispersion assessment in real factories, without the usual limitation for both radio terminals to be close to ground. The measurements are performed at different locations and different heights over the 3.1-5.3 GHz band. Some fundamental propagation parameters values are determined vs. distance, height and propagation conditions. The measurements are complemented with, and compared to, conventional ground-to-ground measurements with the same setup. The conducted measurement campaign gives an insight for realizing wireless applications in smart connected factories, including UAV-assisted applications

Code phase assignment DS/CDMA communications for indoor wireless Rician multipath fading channels

The technique of using a single basic signature sequence for the DS/CDMA system was investigated. All users have their sequences differed by cyclic phase shifts from a basic signature sequence. It is called Code Phase Assignment (CPA). In [1], it has been shown that the CPA DS/CDMA technique yielded better performance over conventional DS/CDMA communications by substantial reduction of the multiple access interference (MAI) and the multipath interference (MI) for a simplified channel model. This paper further investigates its performance in the indoor Rician multipath fading channel. Comparison with conventional DS/CDMA system will be made and the effect on the change of system parameters will be investigated. Higher multiple access capacity over conventional DS/CDMA will be demonstrated. Lastly, CPA could reduce the effort of exhaustive search for sequences which makes it suitable for indoor applications.published_or_final_versio

Phase-based variant maximum likelihood positioning for passive UHF-RFID tags

Radio frequency identification (MD) technology brings tremendous advancement in Internet-of-Things, especially in supply chain and smart inventory management. Phase-based passive ultra high frequency RFID tag localization has attracted great interest, due to its insensitivity to the propagation environment and tagged object properties compared with the signal strength based method. In this paper, a phase-based maximum-likelihood tag positioning estimation is proposed. To mitigate the phase uncertainty, the likelihood function is reconstructed through trigonometric transformation. Weights are constructed to reduce the impact of unexpected interference and to augment the positioning performance. The experiment results show that the proposed algorithms realize line-grained tag localization, which achieve centimeter-level lateral accuracy, and less than 15-centimeters vertical accuracy along the altitude of the racks

Communications systems technology assessment study. Volume 2: Results

The cost and technology characteristics are examined for providing special satellite services at UHF, 2.5 GHz, and 14/12 GHz. Considered are primarily health, educational, informational and emergency disaster type services. The total cost of each configuration including space segment, earth station, installation operation and maintenance was optimized to reduce the user's total annual cost and establish preferred equipment performance parameters. Technology expected to be available between now and 1985 is identified and comparisons made between selected alternatives. A key element of the study is a survey of earth station equipment updating past work in the field, providing new insight into technology, and evaluating production and test methods that can reduce costs in large production runs. Various satellite configurations were examined. The cost impact of rain attenuation at Ku-band was evaluated. The factors affecting the ultimate capacity achievable with the available orbital arc and available bandwidth were analyzed