FEATURE Wireless Technology
LoRa opens up new opportunities in the industrial IoT space
Yuan Lee and Tim Taberner from Advantech discuss the wireless technologies applicable to factory automation
WISE-6610 is high-performance LoRaWAN gateway
I
n the past fi ve years, wireless technology has been an important topic in the industrial sector. There are several key reasons why interest and adoption have grown:
1. Cost savings on overall engineering and installation: Wireless coverage doesn’t need physical cabling to each and every end point or machine that needs connectivity and monitoring. This can signifi cantly reduce the costs and complexities of installation, enabling data to be collected from points that would otherwise be uneconomic to monitor. 2. Flexibility when future expansion is needed: A well-planned wireless deployment allows expansion or redeployment of infrastructure easily and quickly, with zero downtime. 3. The value of data: Mobility, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things, Factory Digitalisation and OEE (Overall Equipment Eff ectiveness) monitoring – the key input to all of these is data, valuable for optimising workfl ows, saving costs and predicting future needs. However, what type data is “valuable”, and what are the costs for collecting it?
The right wireless technology Every wireless technology has its own advantages and disadvantages. Specifying which technology can provide the correct solution depends on multiple factors, including costs (infrastructure, wireless licensing models), data transmission size and frequency, time sensitivity, scale of the application, required coverage (local, national, worldwide), power availability and requirements, and network topology,
22 March 2021 | Automation
Advantech Wise-2410 wireless vibration sensor
among others. As such, no single wireless technology fi ts into every application scenario. The most popular wireless technologies for monitoring and control to date have been cellular, Wi-Fi and private radio:
• Cellular technology is dominant in applications with concerns about the geographic coverage and connections volume. For example, both the car industry and fl eet management require wireless technology in the vehicle that can communicate with central service points around a country or, even, cross-border. Cellular technology (3G/LTE) is currently the best wireless technology for these applications. • Wi-Fi technology is the most common
wireless technology in both consumer and industrial applications. There is no license fee and, thanks to the adoption in consumer and residential applications, component costs and technology entry barriers are low. Wi-Fi is the most popular wireless technology for factory automation and machine builders – markets which require an easy to implement and cost- eff ective local area wireless network. • Private radio systems have been used extensively in the utilities and oil and gas sectors for over thirty years. In these installations, all of the radio equipment, including antenna masts and other infrastructure, is owned and operated by a private company, normally the same that owns the assets being monitored. These systems involve substantial capital expenditure to deploy, and substantial operating expenditure to operate and maintain. As such, they are slowly being
LoRaWan sensing network elements
replaced with more up-to-date and open technology. They do, however, provide the benefi ts of guaranteed bandwidth and low latency.
IIoT wireless technologies continue to be introduced to the market. Some of them are targeted on issues that current wireless technology cannot address. One technology with application in industrial IoT is LoRa, or long-range radio.
LoRa technology
LoRa is a low-power radio technology intended for use in applications where the geographical coverage is large and data volumes and rates relatively low. The technology’s key feature is the very low cost of deployment and operation. It is available in silicon at suffi ciently low prices, to justify its direct inclusion in even the simplest of sensors, and uses suffi ciently low power to allow these sensors be battery operated for many years, as well powered by energy harvesting.
The term LoRa refers only to the underlying radio technology, and does not defi ne any of the data payload or naming formats needed to move information between locations. These formats are layered above the underlying radio system and there are basically two varieties: 1. Vendors design their own proprietary protocol. These systems, known as LoRa proprietary systems, originally had an advantage in that they allowed vendors to bring products to market before standards were fully established. Even after standardisation they still have a place in specialised applications requiring
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