Abstract
The tutorial will explain the field of application and the related research activities associated to wireless sensor networking for industrial applications. Wireless is not intended to substitute cables but is a viable option; a careful evaluation of the risks and returns involved must be performed. Most of advantages are well known, including an easier deployment of sensors and an higher knowledge about the plant status, that helps in improving productivity thus reducing overall costs. The intrinsic flexibility of wireless solution, that allows incremental deployment, is another key feature that allows to explore advantages step by step.
The industrial wireless technology has grown in the recent past. In particular, two standard solutions have been proposed in the past purposely designed for process automation, i.e. WirelessHART and ISA100.11a.
The proposed tutorial is arranged in order to bring value to researchers, instrumentation engineers, automation professionals and influencers in the wireless automation scenario. Requirements of industrial communications are preliminary discussed. Subsequently, basic principles of how standards solutions satisfy these needs are introduced and discussed. Then, the description of a typical installation follows. Finally, some general, “side” topics as coexistence challenges are discussed.
Presenter Bios
Professor E. Sisinni, PhD
University of Brescia
Department of Information Engineering
Emiliano Sisinni was born in 1975. He graduated (M.Sc.) in electronic engineering in 2000 at the University of Brescia. In 2004, he got the Ph.D. in “Electronic Instrumentation” at the same University. Since 2005 he is with the Department of Information Engineering of the Brescia University as a Researcher (Assistant Professor) in the field of electronics. Currently, he is an associate professor in electronics with the same department. He is a visiting professor at the “MidSweden University” for the academic year 2016/2017. Since 2004 he has been involved in teaching activities.
His main research topic is the development and the performance evaluation of digital networks for industrial communications. In particular, as regards “wireless fieldbus”, he has worked on the development of protocol stacks and node hardware with the aim of maximizing determinism, Energy efficiency and measurement accuracy. He has also been involved in the development of digital signal processing of data retrived from sensors based on microcontrollers, DSPs and FPGAs. He is the author of more than 100 international papers (scientific journals and conference proceedings). The research activity on synchronization of PROFINET networks has been awarded as "Best Work In Progress" during ETFA2008 (IEEE conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation). He is also Host Committee Co-Chair of ISPCS 2009 (IEEE International Symposium on Precise Clock Synchronization).
Since 2008 he is in the sub-committee 65C (Digital communications for control systems) of Technical Committee 65 (Control and measurement in industrial processes) of CEI (Italian Electrotechnical Committee). He is also within the committee SC65C - WG16 and WG17 and the TC65C - WG 17 of the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). He is a member of the TCFA Subcommittee on “Green Communication for Automation of the company” supported by the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, since 2014. He is a member of the “IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society” TC37 on “Measurement and Networking”, since 2016. He is reviewer for several international journals, including: IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurements, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Communications Letters, Elsevier Sensors & Actuators: A. Physical, Elsevier Integration, the VLSI Journal, the Journal Of Circuits, Systems And Computers, the Microelectronics Reliability, the Elsevier journal Computer Communications. He is also member of the TPC of several international conferences, including IEEE SAS conference, IEEE I2MTC conference, IEEE ISPCS conference, IEEE WFCS conference.
Professor M. Gidlund, PhD
Mid Sweden University
Department of Information and Communication Systems
Mikael Gidlund received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Mid Sweden University, Sweden, in 2000 and 2005, respectively. He is currently a Full Professor of Computer Engineering with Mid Sweden University, and since 2014, he is also working as a Scientific Advisor with ABB Corporate Research. In 2005, he was a Visiting Researcher with the Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway. From 2006 to 2007, he was a Research Engineer and Project Manager, responsible for wireless broadband communication at Acreo AB, Sweden. From 2007 to 2008, he was a Senior Specialist and Project Manager with responsibility for next-generation IP-based radio solutions at Nera Networks AS, Bergen, Norway. From 2008 to 2013, he was a Senior Principal Scientist and Global Research Area Coordinator of Wireless Technologies with ABB Corporate Research with main responsibility to drive technology and strategy plans, standardization and innovation in the wireless automation area. He holds more than 20 patents (granted and pending applications) in the area of wireless communications, and has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific publications in refereed fora. His research interest are wireless communication and networks, wireless sensor networks, access protocols, and security. He won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Industrial IT (ICIT’14) in 2014. He has served as guest editor for IEEE Trans. on Industrial Informatics two times and is currently vice-chair for IEEE IES Technical Committee on Cloud and Wireless Systems for Industrial Applications.
