Cammin, Christoph

Modern manufacturing is characterized by a high degree of automation, with autonomous systems also frequently being used. In such environments human intervention in the event of malfunctions or maintenance becomes a rare but also necessary task. When human workers are no longer an integral part of the production process, but only intervene when necessary, e.g., in the case of unexpected machine behavior, appropriate safety solutions will become even more important. This work describes a wireless communication system enabling a flexible and safe emergency stop function for multiple automation cells. A portable emergency stop switch allows seamless transition between different wireless cells, ensuring functional safety. The communication protocol combines IO-Link Wireless features with the safety requirements already implemented in IO-Link Safety. Security requirements are fulfilled through encryption and authentication. The IO-Link Wireless roaming functionality is used to extend the system across several manufacturing cells. An experimental setup confirms the suitability of the system for various applications. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the handover mechanism and evaluate the potential of the system to improve flexibility, availability and security in dynamic production environments. Future extensions could include the use of AI based evaluation of the radio signals for an intelligent cell handover.

In the last decades, road traffic significantly increased in many regions. As part of sustainable urban areas, the improvement of safety as well as the optimization of traffic flow are important challenges for road mobility. The new mobile communications standard 5G, which is currently being rolled out, is being promoted with a variety of improvements that also address the transport sector. As one component of a smart city approach, a proposed solution to increase road traffic safety and to optimize the traffic flow by means of using 5G is currently being developed and deployed in the city of Aalen, Germany, as part of the "5G-trAAffic" project.

The growth of parcel shipments for end-customer delivery led to the emergence of robotic sorting systems, which offer improved flexibility and cost-effectiveness compared to conveyor-based sorting systems. Controlling large fleets of mobile robots for sorting tasks remains a challenge, as it requires solving a complex multi-agent path finding problem. One possible solution is the recently introduced rolling horizon collision resolution framework, which is actively discussed in the literature. However, its configuration to suit robotic sorting systems concerning real-time capabilities and throughput is still the object of ongoing investigation. To address this research gap, this study investigates the application of the rolling horizon collision resolution framework on two types of robotic sorting systems and a parameter study is conducted to assess its potential in terms of real-time capability and sorting performance.

The 5th generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks (5G) is currently being deployed at a large scale. In addition to the expansion of public 5G networks, (private) 5G campus networks are also set up in many areas. However, in parallel with the development of 5G, numerous other wireless solutions have also evolved, primarily using unlicensed frequency bands. In addition to various versions of the consumer grade IEEE 802.11-based WLAN standards and Bluetooth, a number of specific wireless solutions for predominantly industrial data communication have been established. The advantages of these comparatively simpler, non-5G wireless technologies are lower price levels, higher availability of established products on the market, and improved energy efficiency, which often lead to a significant commercial success and justify their beneficial use. This contribution presents a hybrid campus wireless network infrastructure, which is intended to fulfill various requirements as a testbed, especially in the areas of automation, logistics and traffic. A focus is on wireless coexistence, functional safety requirements and functionalities in conjunction with the associated security for safety.

Road traffic significantly increased in the last decades. The avoidance of accidents and the continuity of traffic flow are significant challenges for road mobility. In this paper, a real-time Internet of Things (IoT) architecture is presented for these current road traffic challenges. The presented architecture takes advantage of the emerging 5G mobile technology and relies on infrastructure components so that the presented architecture can be integrated into city infrastructure to become smarter and provide benefits to citizens. A collision warning service is being implemented to warn road users of imminent collisions. The parallel traffic flow optimization will also enable the prioritization of highlighted traffic partici-pants, such as emergency vehicles. By prioritizing pedestrians, bicycles, e-bikes and buses, for example, it will also be possible to achieve specific traffic and climate policy goals. An according smartphone app allows the resulting advantages to be used in the short term. Furthermore, additional actuators such as displays and signal transmitters will integrate all road users, regardless of the specific app usage. By using 5G, these components will also be implemented quickly, flexibly and reliably as infrastructure IoT devices. The paper concludes with a presentation of a research project in which these solutions are currently being implemented.

Communication reliability is a challenging requirement, which implies the need for over-the-air (OTA) testing. Reverberation chambers (RCs) are widely used for OTA tests in various fields. Due to their properties, such as inherent radio channel emulation or the arbitrary orientation of the equipment under test (EUT) in the test volume, they can be used as advantageous test environments for wireless products in the field of industrial manufacturing automation, such as for the IO-Link Wireless (IOLW) standard. In this paper, the different OTA sensitivity test procedures total isotropic sensitivity (TIS), average fading sensitivity (AFS) and mean channel packet error (MCPE) method, which is based on the fundamental channel model of the wireless standard, are described and evaluated in various variants. A core aspect of the proposal is the impact of the possible use of frequency hopping of the wireless equipment under test. The respective advantages and disadvantages are shown. Overall, TIS proves to be a suitable alternative for IOLW OTA sensitivity testing.

Modern production concepts generate a demand for reliable, energy-efficient, fast, and secure wireless communication solutions. Therefore, the current consumption should not increase substantially due to additional cryptographic operations. This paper shows a principle current measurement method that is exemplary of a transceiver for the IO-Link Wireless protocol. Low-pass filtering and single-sided amplitude spectrum analysis are used to evaluate the main information of the current measurement. An uncertainty estimation is realized using statistical measurement data and considering the measurement setup in order to approximate the combined standard uncertainty. The results show that the current consumption only increases slightly when using additional cryptographic operations. This can be measured with acceptable uncertainty.

In the field of production automation, IO-Link Wireless (IOLW) offers energy-efficient and cost-effective solutions for networking wireless sensors and actuators close to the machines on the industrial shop-floor. In this paper, a concept is presented to enhance IOLW with security-for-safety and safety features in order to make safety critical systems in industrial environments with performance characteristics dedicated to demanding applications feasible. As data security is of paramount importance, security mechanisms already implemented in other wireless protocols are investigated and security-for-safety mechanisms for IOLW are introduced. Potential cryptographic algorithms are evaluated for IOLW with respect to energy consumption and timing. Taking performance parameters into account, which are crucial for industrial manufacturing processes, a safety protocol data unit (SPDU) is described and evaluated for different payload length and cycle times. Finally, an outlook towards the implementation of a demonstrator setup completes this work.

To ensure a high quality of service for industrial radio systems, frequency planning is indispensable. Frequency monitoring is very advantageous for minimizing possible collisions in the exchanged data packets and for quickly detecting unwanted interferers. Spectrum analyzers currently available on the market for the ISM band are significantly above the price level of the radio systems used. The measurement data and analyses from these measurement systems are also not made available online. The fast spectrum monitoring system is intended to remedy this situation. In addition to continuous online monitoring of the 2.45 GHz ISM band, it offers the possibility of providing evaluations and analyses of occupied frequency channels with low latency. In addition, detected radio systems can be quickly classified and interferers extracted. The analysis results can be transmitted directly to the operational radio systems using suitable communication interfaces or made available in the cloud for long-term evaluations. The development was based on the premise of combining this system with an IO-Link wireless system. The focus was on the rapid provision of analysis results from radio systems with fast frequency changes, as is typical for Bluetooth. With the help of this analysis data, the possible uses in the area of safety & security applications should also be discussed.