WiFi 6 should make industrial applications more reliable

Just like wired networks, wireless networks are continuously evolving within the WiFi standard. WiFi 6 has now been announced, a standard that should solve a number of pain points of previous WiFi standards. Sjoerd Hakstege, Technical Consultant Network & Security at Phoenix Contact, explains during his reading explain how this works at the Industrial Ethernet online knowledge days.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

Wireless networks are already widely used in industry. Hakstege: “Within the industry, the requirements we place on WiFi are different than for the consumer market. Availability of the network and equipment are very important, because you have to be able to run production. You should therefore preferably be able to deal with the temporary loss of a connection. WiFi 6 offers a number of improvements to the availability and reliability of the wireless connection. For example, thanks to the BSS coloring function, you can ensure that WiFi devices get in each other's way less.”

According to Hakstege, adjustments are also possible to ensure that devices work reliably on WiFi: “For example, a lot of WiFi is used in automated guided vehicles (AGVs). The built-in intelligence in an AGV vehicle can process commands itself, so that the vehicle is not continuously dependent on a wireless connection. With WiFi 6, these wireless connections can be made more reliable, reducing the need for local intelligence.”

In addition, good planning is necessary to use WiFi for industrial purposes, says Hakstege: “You have to make good radio planning, so set up the network properly, choose the right channels and install sufficient access points. And this is also one of the points where Wifi 6 will offer improvements and benefits. For example, on the required density of your network and how many devices you can operate in a network. The bandwidth is also increasing.”

He continues: “Techniques from the Bluetooth standard have also been adopted, especially for more efficient energy consumption. For example, you now have Bluetooth beacons in factory halls for position determination. You can also do this with WiFi 6 by using small battery-powered transmitters. WiFi 6 also has energy saving techniques.”

5G is now also gaining ground in the industry. There are parallels to be drawn between the two, says Hakstege: “If you look at the increasing bandwidth, you see a trend together with 5G. Real-time functionality within the 5G standard will also become available soon. And those underlying techniques are more or less also included in WiFi 6.”

However, companies still have to be patient before they can implement WiFi 6: “I expect the first WiFi 6 products for the industry to appear at the end of the year,” says Hakstege. “Why are we already talking about WiFi 6? We would like to share our knowledge. For example, we already do coverage measurements with the current WiFi. We use special equipment to map factory halls and determine where access points should be located. Once installed, we often measure everything to see whether everything has been calculated correctly.”

A disadvantage of WiFi is still that the available spectrum is limited. “That is certainly the case on the 2.4GHz band,” says Hakstege. “There is so much overlap in terms of channels that you actually only have three channels that are completely free.” It remains to be seen whether the EU will eventually make more free spectrum available for WiFi (6GHz band), the European Commission has yet to vote on this.

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