Trådlös kommunikation över mobilt nätverk i industriell miljö Koncepttest och analys av industriellt bussprotokoll över trådlöst nätverk

Abstract

The report describes an implementation of a proof of concept where a virtual control system communicates with an industrial robot over the mobile network. The proof of concept was used to analyse the possibility of replacing wired communication within a factory station with wireless communication over a mobile network. The proof of concept consisted of creating a software application and performing tests to analyse the lowest possible cycle time. The tests consisted of a setup where the software application was placed and executed on a server sending Ethernet frames through UDP packets in a L2TP tunnel to a Rasperry Pi. The industrial fieldbus protocol Powerlink was used and the network consisted of one master and slave node. The lowest possible cycle time achived was 40 ms with a latency of 15 ms over the mobile network. Sending Ethernet frames over the mobile network worked fine, but a cycle time of 40 ms is too slow to replace a wired communication. However, it could be applied on other time critical systems within the industry, for example communication with overall systems.