Long-Term Wireless Sensor Network Deployments in Industry and Office Scenarios

Wireless networks are indispensable for current and future elements of industry 4.0 and the digital transformation of companies. Industrial environments with arrays of machines mostly made of metal differ significantly from home and office environments, with consequential effects on wireless communication. We deployed wireless sensor networks built with commercial-off-the-shelf hardware in industrial and office scenarios and evaluated various aspects of wireless communications with different technologies and parameters. In this paper, we present our measurement architecture and the core findings. The results show highly spatial- and time-dependent differences between the two scenarios and also provide a comparative evaluation of the applied technologies. In addition, we also share parameters for established simulation models making future simulative evaluations particularly easy.