Industrial wireless: Problem space, success considerations, technologies, and future direction

The use of wireless technologies within factories demands a comprehensive understanding of the problems and potential solutions associated with the rigors of the manufacturing environment. A clearly defined problem space would significantly ease the selection and deployment of appropriate wireless solutions to connected factory systems. A mapping of potential technologies to classes of use cases within the problem space will be useful to factory operators, system integrators, and wireless systems manufacturers. Identification of use cases, not addressed by existing technologies, may be used to spur targeted innovation where reliability, resilience, latency, and scalability are joint concerns. Motivated by the industry need for independent practical guidelines and solutions to difficult wireless control problems, this paper provides a classification of the problem categories where networking technologies may be deployed. It then maps specific technologies that may serve as interim or terminal solutions for those use cases identified within the problem space taxonomy.