Physical Layer Design of High-Performance Wireless Transmission for Critical Control Applications

The next generations of industrial control systems will require high-performance wireless networks (named WirelessHP) able to provide extremely low latency, ultrahigh reliability, and high data rates. The current strategy toward the realization of industrial wireless networks relies on adopting the bottom layers of general purpose wireless standards and customizing only the upper layers. In this paper, a new bottom-up approach is proposed through the realization of a WirelessHP physical layer specifically targeted at reducing the communication latency through the minimization of packet transmission time. Theoretical analysis shows that the proposed design allows a substantial reduction in packet transmission time, down to 1 μs, with respect to the general purpose IEEE 802.11 physical layer. The design is validated by an experimental demonstrator, which shows that reliable communications up to 20 m range can be established with the proposed physical layer.