Suitability of WiFi based communication devices in low power industrial applications

With advancement in the concept of internet of things (IoT), many industrial applications today have migrated from wired to wireless communication protocols. The major requirements of industrial devices utilizing wireless technologies include high performance reliability similar to wired network, and longevity in terms of battery life. Wireless field devices that run on battery should be able to operate for long duration without frequent battery replacement. Industrial use-cases may have varied data rate requirements from very low data rates in the order of few kilo bits per second, to upwards of hundreds of kilo bits per second or may be in mega bits per second. Thus depending on the use-case one should select a suitable wireless technology that can address the requirements. While there exists a number of alternative technologies that offer very low data rate along with long battery life usage, the number of technologies offering medium to higher data rates along with long battery life are limited. WiFi or IEEE 802.11b/g standard is typically considered to be energy hungry solution, however due to the advancements in implementation technology, some of these radio devices exhibit very low power consumption during non-active states, and thus can be utilized in industrial use-cases that require long battery life along with medium to high data rates. In this paper, we have studied the suitability of WiFi as a candidate for low power industrial needs. Comparisons have been provided with IEEE 802.15.4 wireless technology as well.