Year by year, more wireless technologies are used in automation technology. Users benefit from this as wireless solutions offer a higher degree of mobility and flexibility. Often, one reason for using a wireless system is the fact that this allows costs to be saved.
The automation industry mostly relies on wireless technologies that can be used worldwide. Due to the national frequency regulation, only few frequency bands meet this requirement. The ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) bands can be used without a licence, but only the 2,4 GHz ISM frequency band is available worldwide. This is why most wireless technologies in automation technology use this band.
There is even more to this band than its worldwide availability and the fact that it can be used free of charge. With a bandwidth of 83 MHz, this frequency band enables the parallel operation of several wireless systems – even if different wireless technologies are used. Other bands, such as the 433 MHz band (bandwidth 1 MHz) or the 868 MHz band (EU only, bandwidth 2 MHz) offer a smaller bandwidth. Thus, there are fewer ways of a coexistence of several wireless systems in these lower frequency bands. However, coexistence is one of the vital properties of wireless technologies as the number of wireless systems constantly increases while the available resources (wireless spectrum) are limited.
However, the conditions for the propogation of electromagnetic waves are better in lower frequency ranges. Therefore, the ranges decrease the higher the frequency becomes. The free space attenuation depends logarithmically on the transmission frequency. This means that if the transmission frequency is halved (e.g. from 868 MHz to 433 MHz), the free space attenuation is reduced by 6 dB for the same distance. With a free space attenuation that is decreased by 6 dB you can achieve double the range with the same transmission power.
In the following, the description of the Trusted Wireless 2.0 technology will refer to well-known wireless technologies of the consumer and IT sector. As nowadays Bluetooth and WLAN are also used in an industrial environment, we would like to especially outline the differences against these technologies. There is also a wireless technology called WirelessHART which has been developed especially for the process industry. This technology will also be described and compared to the others.
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