Wireless extensions of wired industrial communications networks

Wireless (sub)networks are becoming appealing for their characteristics also for the industrial automation and manufacturing scenarios. Since they cannot be considered as a total replacement for more traditional wired communications, at least in the short/mid-term, it is worth focusing on their integration with popular industrial wired solutions in order to achieve efficiency and performance for the overall networked system. This paper presents some considerations on how it is possible to extend some well-known industrial communication solutions (namely Profibus DP, DeviceNet, Profinet IO and Ethernet/IP) with subnetworks based on the IEEE 802.11 technology, resulting in hybrid networks. In particular, the paper analyses the available interconnection techniques and, depending on the wired networks considered, suggests some hybrid configurations that are able to cope with tight timing requirements that are often imposed by industrial communications.