Monitoring and Diagnosis for Wireless Real-Time Applications

The possibility to connect mobile end-devices and mobile automation facilities leads to fast deployment of Wireless LANs in factory automation, for instance to connect hand-scanners, mobile operation-terminals, automated guided vehicles. In these applications, WLAN is typically used for transparently prolonging a wired connection at the end of a control line (e.g. for controlling a mobile robot), or for communication within a single cell. In the future, emerging Wireless Mesh Network solutions will even go one step further with respect to reduction of cabling costs and increased flexibility. In process automation the deployment of wireless mesh networks has already started (e.g. WirelessHART). They are mainly used for overall process supervision and control for the whole plant, for instance in SCADA systems (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition). Factory and process automation applications typically have high availability and real-time requirements. In order to ensure that these requirements are met monitoring and diagnosis is required.