To enable the industry in the context of advanced manufacturing and processing (Industry 4.0), i.e. Industrial Internet of Things, confidence in and reliability of the wireless connections must be given to use wireless communication instead of traditional wired connections for controlling and monitoring. This requires proofing the suitability of a wireless communication system for a given application with a standardized validation/rating system.
Although much network planning and connectivity estimation is done, still no such rating system exists. In the ReICOvAir project the necessary standards, methods and tools for providing proof are developed, standardized and integrated into a single comprehensive software and hardware testbed solution. By gathering requirements from the industry, current research activities (e.g. FITS project), and standardization activities (e.g. LTE-M, LoRa alliance), a rating system for wireless communication systems will be developed (e.g. maximum delay and packet error rate under certain interference conditions).
A set of relevant test-cases for the rating process will be defined. These will consist of standard use cases (e.g. an interference scenario) as well as methods of referencing individual reception scenarios to a given standard test case (e.g. finding the worst-case scenario of a real deployment). Both rating system and test cases shall be provided to European standardization bodies.
To provide the means to practically rate communication systems, a testbed will be developed. The development will encompass the following parts:
- Modelling of different coexistence scenarios
- a state-of-the-art propagation channel model will be enhanced for industrial environments: QuaDRiGa 2.0
- parameters for the channel model received from channel sounder measurement campaigns
- methods of taking into account the media access behavior in industrial environment based on “Radio-Transfer-Tester for Industrial Radio Solutions (FTT)”
- software testbed for hardware-independent rating of communication standards
- hardware testbed for rating existing wireless communication solutions
With ReICOvAir, industry will finally be able to overcome the uncertainty barrier on using wireless communication for the production process.
