Radio Frequency (RF) Mesh Based Industrial IoT Solution

Summary

A Turkish company with IPv6-based high-reliability wireless sensor networking solutions for IoT applications seeks partners under license and technical cooperation agreements. The solutions are optimized to provide reliable wireless connectivity in harsh environments with a high concentration of electromagnetic noise sources. This high reliability can be achieved with a deterministic network delay and ultra-low energy consumption.

Description

In recent years, there is an increased interest in IoT solutions with the introduction of application areas such as the Industrial Internet and Smart Grid. Wireless IoT networks consist of devices with wireless capability operating autonomously and reporting application-specific parameters to a central entity. The reported parameters depend on the application and vary in terms of bandwidth, delay, and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. For example, a Smart Grid application requires reporting of the electricity grid data with low delay to a central controller. For this application, the delay experienced in the network should be deterministic to guarantee reliable control of the Grid. This brings about the challenge of having a solution with a deterministic network delay.
In 2012, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published an amendment document to the 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol to enable time-slotted access to the communication medium called IEEE 802.15.4e. Furthermore, the nodes using IEEE 802.15.4e MAC can use hopping between different frequency bands to improve communication reliability. Recently, a standardization effort is being put forward to bring together 4e MAC and already established IPv6 technology within the wireless sensors with IEEE 802.15.4e. This will enable a deterministic mesh networking protocol which can be a cornet stone for future high reliable Machine to Machine communications. This protocol is named 6TiSCH (IPv6 routing over time-slotted channel hopping MAC).

The Turkish company offers wireless IoT solutions using Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF) 6TiSCH technology which can connect wireless devices with high reliability and be utilized in Industrial settings and also in infrastructure monitoring. The company is looking for industrial partners under technological and licensing agreements.

Advantages & innovations

The technology provides a wireless communication solution that can support data delivery reliability levels similar to that of wired solutions. This makes the solution ideal for applications requiring high reliability where cabling may be expensive or difficult due to the nature of the application. This observation is particularly correct for the industrial settings where connecting many machines via cables can be difficult due to environmental limitations. The solution can also be used to give delay guarantees to communicating endpoints providing an ideal platform for delay-sensitive applications such as closed-loop control solutions. Furthermore, the low energy consumption of the offered technology can be ideal for applications where sensor devices are expected to run on harvested energy such as infrastructure monitoring solutions. The company is actively developing its solution and extending it with original features which can provide superior performance in many scenarios as compared to existing solutions. The networking solution is deployed in the field with more than 1000 active communication modules.

Stage of development

Already on the market

Contact / source: Enterprise Europe Network (europa.eu)