Survey on Wireless Technology Trade-Offs for the Industrial Internet of Things

TLDR

Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks provide connectivity for monitoring, coordination, and asset tracking, yet available wireless technologies vary widely in performance and cannot support all industrial use cases. This paper evaluates technologies suitable for IWSAN across an entire industrial site with limited infrastructure cost and discusses their trade‑offs to aid technology selection. The authors assess candidate wireless technologies by comparing their capabilities and trade‑offs for full‑site deployment, focusing on cost‑efficiency and suitability for diverse use cases. The comparative discussion enables engineers to choose the most appropriate wireless technology for their specific IWSAN deployment.

Abstract

Aside from vast deployment cost reduction, Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (IWSAN) introduce a new level of industrial connectivity. Wireless connection of sensors and actuators in industrial environments not only enables wireless monitoring and actuation, it also enables coordination of production stages, connecting mobile robots and autonomous transport vehicles, as well as localization and tracking of assets. All these opportunities already inspired the development of many wireless technologies in an effort to fully enable Industry 4.0. However, different technologies significantly differ in performance and capabilities, none being capable of supporting all industrial use cases. When designing a network solution, one must be aware of the capabilities and the trade-offs that prospective technologies have. This paper evaluates the technologies potentially suitable for IWSAN solutions covering an entire industrial site with limited infrastructure cost and discusses their trade-offs in an effort to provide information for choosing the most suitable technology for the use case of interest. The comparative discussion presented in this paper aims to enable engineers to choose the most suitable wireless technology for their specific IWSAN deployment.