An IEEE Standard for Industrial Wireless Performance Evaluation

Adoption of wireless systems for use in industrial scenarios is increasing, although slowly, in process control and discrete manufacturing. In particular, factories must make the leap towards wireless networks as a central form of communications to enable certain capabilities out-lined by Industry 4.0. Acceptance of wireless as a principal communications mode is slowed by the fact that it is indeed less reliable and less deterministic than its wired counterparts. The industrial wireless medium is susceptible to interference and multi-path fading effects, and their impacts are exacerbated by the mission critical nature of the attached sensing and control applications. Adoption of wireless networks can be made more acceptable if the uncertainty of the wireless medium is better understood and wireless devices are designed to accommodate such uncertainty. This can be achieved through analysis of the RF environment beyond its propagation characteristics and the standardized evaluation of wireless network performance prior to deployment. This article describes the ongoing approach taken by the IEEE P1451.5p working group for the standardization of industrial wireless network performance evaluation. A strategy for modeling channel degradation factors (aggressors) and perspectives on profiling the model for replication of different radio environment scenarios are presented.