On the Suitability of Wi-Fi for Interconnecting Moving Equipment in Industrial Environments

TL;DR

This paper evaluates Wi-Fi's suitability for industrial environments with mobile equipment, focusing on reliability, latency, and energy consumption through simulation analysis.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive simulation-based assessment of Wi-Fi's performance for real-time control in mobile industrial settings, addressing key challenges.

Findings

Wi-Fi can meet latency requirements under certain conditions

Energy consumption varies significantly with device activity

Reliability depends on network configuration and mobility patterns

Abstract

To ensure an unprecedented degree of flexibility, next-generation Industry 4.0/5.0 production plants increasingly rely on mobile devices, e.g., autonomous mobile robots and wearables. In these cases, a major requirement is getting rid of cables through the adoption of wireless networks. To this purpose, Wi-Fi is currently deemed one of the most promising solutions. Achieving reliable communications over the air for distributed real-time control applications is, however, not devoid of troubles. In fact, bounded transmission latency must be ensured for most of the exchanged packets. Moreover, for devices powered on batteries, energy consumption also needs to be taken into account. In this paper, a joint simulated analysis of these aspects is carried out to quantitatively evaluate what we can practically expect from Wi-Fi technology.