Study on potentials of Software Defined Radio and Cognitive Radio for industrial automation applications

The variety of applications for wireless automation requires different and specifically optimised wireless solutions. This variety calls for different commissioning and diagnosis tools and therefore causes additional effort for training of service personal. A unique hardware platform with a unique user interface that can be easily adopted by software would be a perfect solution. Taking into account the ambition of regulation authorities to assign the spectrum more flexible, new possibilities could be established for industrial wireless applications. These possibilities could easily be developed using software defined radio (SDR) and cognitive radio (CR) technologies. Therefore, this study analysis the application requirements, the characteristics of SDR/CR, the availability of hardware components and platforms, as well as regulation, standardisation and patent issues. Finally, the results of the analyses will be assessed with respect to industrial automation applications.