Estudio de la fiabilidad de capas físicas inalámbricas de 2.45 ghz en entornos industriales mediante emulación de canal

• DIRECTORS: Manuel María Vélez and Aitor Arriola
• UNIVERSITY: UPV/EHU

Abstract:

The concept of Industry 4.0 has emerged in recent years. This term refers to a set of technological advances that, once developed and applied to industry, will result in the fourth industrial revolution. This new industrial era will be characterized by interoperability between all elements of an industrial environment, both machines and workers, and decentralization of decision-making in production processes.

Wireless communications occupy a fundamental role in the Industry 4.0. However, their use in industrial environments, although increasing, remains residual when compared to wired communications. This is because the physical properties of the industrial environment generate propagation conditions that are far from ideal, adversely affecting the reliability of communications.

When a wireless link is required to be deployed in an industrial environment, a validation of the reliability of communications is necessary to provide certain guarantees of operation. Current methodologies present deficiencies when applied in industrial environments, which result in a lack of reproducibility and inaccuracy of the results of validations regarding those obtained after deployment.

For this reason, this thesis defines a methodology to evaluate and validate the reliability of the physical layers of wireless communications systems used by terminal nodes in industrial use cases. This methodology considers the appropriate metrics to evaluate reliability, the relevant parameters to define correctly the measurement scenario, the details of the laboratory setup and the communication algorithm to be used.

Likewise, the proposed methodology is applied to evaluate and validate the reliability of three physical layers defined by the wireless standards IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy. This has provided reliability results for all physical layers for both general purpose and purely industrial channels. Mathematical expressions have also been obtained to predict the reliability of the physical layers under the different industrial channels. Finally, these physical layers have been validated for three general industrial use cases.