Industrial Wirless Network

Industrial Wireless Technology Overview

Wireless technologies are gaining as much popularity in industrial applications as in your homes, offices, or even small businesses. But the problem occurs to choose between various wireless technologies. There is not a single area of RF spectrum that you can choose for your system or product. Instead you have to select from the proprietary and standard based technologies. These technologies vary in terms of frequencies and protocols. Here are some well-known and prominent wireless technologies. These include WiFi, ZigBee, WiMAX, Cellular, and RFID.

WiFi wireless technology for WLAN

Most sophisticated and commonly used wireless technology is WiFi. It is considered as wireless extension for the Ethernet. You can find the related products in IEEE 802.11 product family. The reason behind its popularity is the advancements in the recent past years. Advantages of WiFi are many. WiFi can be implemented at relatively low cost provided with a high degree of standardization. WiFi technology also offers an advanced and sophisticated security implementation. High bandwidth of WiFi makes it possible to use in handheld data loggers, mobile operator terminals, and video surveillance cameras. Well nothing is perfect and so does the WiFi. It also offers certain disadvantages. WiFi supports limited numbers of channels. This makes an issue for sensor and condition monitoring networks. Also the network and policy management is relatively critical and requires much more diligence than the wired networks.

ZigBee wireless technology for sensor networks

ZigBee is standardized protocol stack and is used with IEEE 802.15.4 specifications for radio frequencies. It is not a fixed protocol rather extensible. It is suitable for the sensor networks with low data rates and low power. Such condition monitoring networks are used to control climate, lighting, safety, and security. One major benefit of ZigBee is its multi path support for mesh architecture. And the biggest disadvantage is its long battery life with low latency support.

WiMAX wireless technology for Microwave Access

WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. Previous technologies for microwave access were MMDS and LMD. But these were not standardized. WiMAX is a standardized technology and include IEEE 802.16 standard specifications. Intel supports WiMAX and offers both Licensed and unlicensed band frequencies. Moreover it offers high bandwidth for maximum of 50-kilo meter distance provided line of sight.

Satellite and cellular services

Satellite and cellular services are easy to install and are ready in a very short time. These services offer M2M (machine-to-machine) wireless communication. Cellular wireless technology is common and useful for terrestrial person-to-person communication. Variable environmental parameters affect the efficiency. The implementation cost is variable and high.

RFID wireless technology

RFID wireless technology offers a reliable scheme for authentication of persons and things including identity, location and security. It is a cheap and cost efficient scheme to for the things or user identification and track. Limited range is its main drawback.