IO-Link Wireless – industrial wireless networking with deterministic cycle time

The IO-Link wireless radio technology, which can be used worldwide, provides a cost-effective, highly reliable and deterministic communication standard. The radio technology uses up to 80 channels in the license-free 2.4 GHz ISM band.

Features

Low Latency

IO-Link Wireless offers a deterministic latency of 5 ms for bidirectional transmission.

Reliability

Wireless achieves high transmission reliability with a packet loss rate of up to 10-9, outperforming other wireless communication solutions.

Rough Environments

Due to the frequency hopping method, IO-Link Wireless is specially designed for use in rough environmental conditions.

Coexistence

A blacklisting mechanism allows IO-Link Wireless to coexist with other wireless networks without interference.

Scalability

A master supports up to 8 devices per radio part, whereby up to 5 synchronous radio parts per master can be operated in parallel and up to 3 asynchronous masters per radio cell.

 

Projects

SSDM

In the Sensor and Software Defined Manufacturing SSDM project, the movement accuracy of a robot is to be improved by sensor technology. To achieve this, multi-axis inertial measurement units (IMU) at multiple locations on the robot arm must be wirelessly connected to a controller. The communication requirements to transmit the continuous stream of sensor data are low latency in the range of 10 ms and highest reliability, which pose a challenge to any wireless system. Many existing wireless technologies cannot be used for such time-critical use cases with real-time requirements because they do not meet the highly reliable, low-latency communication requirements.

The project investigated the suitability of IO-Link Wireless for the intended use case. Measurements were made of packet error rates at the bit transmission (physical layer) or medium access (medium access control layer) level. An IO-Link Wireless protocol stack was implemented as a prototype on a dual-core System-on-Chip and successfully tested on the robot.

Our technological solution is focused on high data throughput with IO-Link Wireless and high reliability. In addition to the error protection protocol with packet repetition (ARQ) provided in the standard, an alternative error protection based on network-based coding (Network Coding) was implemented. This allows the usable data rate to be almost doubled or the reliability to be further increased.

Our offer

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We support you in deciding the right radio technology for your application as well as in introducing deterministic radio transmission based on IO-Link Wireless. If required, we complement the technology with enhancements in the area of data protection through the application of Network Coding or Network Coded Cooperation.

Ultra Reliable Wireless Networks

 

For this purpose, we have comprehensive technical and practice-oriented know-how, real-time software implementations for multi-core transceivers as well as state-of-the-art measurement technology up to a complete test center for testing the developed radio technologies in real deployment scenarios.