C4.1 - Wireless Automation
- Event
- SENSOR+TEST Conferences 2009
2009-05-26 - 2009-05-28
Congress Center Nürnberg - Band
- Proceedings SENSOR 2009, Volume II
- Chapter
- C4 - Sensor Communication I
- Author(s)
- G. Scholl - Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, Germany
- Pages
- 157 - 162
- DOI
- 10.5162/sensor09/v2/c4.1
- ISBN
- 978-3-9810993-5-5
- Price
- free
Abstract
Resource conserving weight, material and energy savings, achievement of compliance with new environmental and safety requirements, cost-efficient retrofitting of already existing monitoring and control systems, improvement of labor productivity, inventory optimization, mobile operation and tracking, remote control and maintenance or alleviation and acceleration of awkward or laborious installations are only some reasons boosting wireless technologies in automation applications. Highly matured low-power CMOS technologies with an ever-increasing performance and steadily shrinking chip-sizes enable the integration of microelectronic components and systems into machines, tools, sensors and actuators. Compared with, e.g. the mobile phone market, the market for machine-to-machine communication is much more conservative and diversified. A single wireless solution cannot deliver all the benefits in every situation and must be tailored to the requirements of the different market segments, which can roughly be subdivided into transportation and logistics, building automation, factory and process automation and infrastructure plants. Thus, the wireless automation market offers opportunities for creative ideas for highly specialized applications but also requires industry standards to guarantee systems interoperability and to increase quantities. Even a discussion of only a subset of the various solutions already available on the market goes far beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore, this article is focused on processs and factory automation, outlining newest trends and developments in the field.