How the coming wireless revolution will impact manufacturing

摘要

Wireless technology refers to signal transmission such as microwave, infrared (IR), laser beams, and radio frequency (RF) in which the transmitting medium is wireless. Until recently, wireless applications were limited to specialized cases in select industries and research laboratories. Most commercial applications today are directly associated with vast, growing industries: cellular telephones, computer local area networks (LANs), and computer wide- area networks (WANs). The rising cost of hard wiring signals in manufacturing facilities along with the significant advances in digital and communications technologies have allowed the wireless technology to emerge as an attractive and cost-effective alternative. In this paper, technical issues associated with two applications will be described in which wireless systems have been successfully developed and applied by a team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). These wireless applications demonstrate the technical challenges and benefits realized by wireless technologies. A more comprehensive wireless concept aimed at automating large-scale manufacturing facilities in a unified approach using wireless links will also be discussed.