Challenges of Industry 4.0 for the Assessment of Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC)

Industry 4.0, which is also named cloud-based manufacturing, is seen as the next industrial revolution. One central element is the availability of digital machine data and the integration into a data network. The combination with wireless networks like WLAN or LTE/5G provides a high amount of flexibility. While the application of wireless communication services is discussed mostly on functional level, it also means a challenge for EMC assessment of the machine. Furthermore this work shows that the actual EMC emission and immunity tests of the device are not sufficient to ensure the performance of these services. This work gives recommendations for an improved system design and proposes a new approach for EMC testing to protect the data highways for the applications of industry 4.0.