Interconnection of mobile CPS and stationary Production Machines trough Real-time Wireless Communication

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Armin Lechler
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2015 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 267322895

Industry is presently on the threshold to the forth industrial revolution. In the future, industrial production will be marked by strong individualization of products and a highly flexible (large-series) production. In order to achieve this, it is planned to integrate Cyber-physical systems (CPS) into the production and thus form, together with warehouse systems, a Smart Factory. In intelligent factories, different information must be shared between local and mobile CPSs - more and more wireless. For this reason, it is of vital importance to investigate, how communication between CPSs will be possible in consideration of industrial communication requirements. In order to allow peripheral CPSs (e.g. automated guided vehicle) to interact with production cells, the use of wireless communication on cell level is pursued. So far, there are no adequate wireless communication standards for the cell level in regard to data rate, synchronism, reaction time, availability and reliability. The required data rate is only provided in case of the wireless communication standards Wi-Fi, Wimax and LTE-Advanced. Only Wimax and LTE Advanced use proprietary frequency bands, nevertheless LTE Advanced presents a larger data rate and a smaller reaction time and is, therefore, better suited for the use on cell level. However, LTE-Advanced has no mechanisms to allow for the synchronization of tasks in different communicating devices. An extension of LTE Advanced shall help to achieve this objective, namely by implementing synchronization and communication stabilizing mechanisms. As the two missing parameters, availability and reliability, are guaranteed by the proprietary frequency used, it would then be possible to reach the stringent requirements of the cell level communication and then to enable the implementation of Industry 4.0 infrastructure.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr.-Ing. Alexander Verl