w-SHARP: Implementation of a High-Performance Wireless Time-Sensitive Network for Low Latency and Ultra-low Cycle Time Industrial Applications

Real-time Industrial applications in the scope of Industry 4.0. present significant challenges from the communication perspective: low latency, ultra-reliability, and determinism. Given that wireless networks provide a significant cost reduction, lower deployment time, and free movement of the wireless nodes, wireless solutions have attracted the industry attention. However, industrial networks are mostly built by wired means because state-of-the-art wireless networks cannot cope with the industrial applications requirements. In this article, we present the hardware implementation of wireless SHARP (w-SHARP), a promising wireless technology for real-time industrial applications. w-SHARP follows the principles of time-sensitive networking and provides time synchronization, time-aware scheduling with bounded latency and high reliability. The implementation has been carried out on a field-programmable gate array-based software-defined radio platform. We demonstrate, through a hardware testbed, that w-SHARP is able to provide ultra-low control cycles, low latency, and high reliability. This implementation may open new perspectives in the implementation of high-performance industrial wireless networks, as both PHY and MAC layers are now subject to be optimized for specific industrial applications.