The Impact of Li-Fi Technology on Industrial Wireless Sensors Networks

Industrial monitoring systems based on industrial wireless sensor networks IWSNs as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are vital components of most nations’ critical infrastructures. One of the industrial protocols that are used by wireless sensors is ZigBee. This standard has advantages such as low power consumption, good coverage area, and easy expansion of the network. But it has lower data rates, it operates in 2. 4GHz band which makes it not immune against interference, it is affected by electromagnetic fields. Recently, more concern appears toward light communication, especially toward Li-Fi (Light-Fidelity) technology. It uses light emitting diodes (LEDs) for high speed wireless communications, and speeds of over 3 Gb/s. Li-Fi communication has many advantages over RF communications, Li-Fi is faster, interference immune has wider bandwidth, and is more secure, these features make Li-Fi communications the better choice in wireless industrial communications. In this study a suggestion of replacement of the ZigBee protocol as a wireless communication used in industrial field with Li-Fi protocol, also the study evaluates the optimum performance of Wireless SCADA that utilizes only IEEE S02.15.4 protocol (which ZigBee is based on). The study evaluates the optimum performance of an industrial wireless sensor network that utilizes only the IEEE S02.15.17 protocol (Li-Fi). OMNeT++ simulations are used to evaluate the performance of the two protocols by measuring the end-to-end delay, bit error rate, power consumption, and other parameters.