The KoI project is funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) and is a collaboration between academia and industry to develop a wireles communication concept for industrial environments.

In particular, the project aims to tackle the following challenges:

• Very high requirements regarding latency, jitter, reliability and their respective combinations in different scenarios.
• Very dense deployment of communication entities.
• Utilization of heterogenous radio access technologies, i,e., a systematic combination of already available, enhancements and novel technologies.
• Challenging channel requirements due to inadequate channel properties in the envisogned scnearios. In addition, high signal interference caused by intra system interference or coexistance with other radio technolgiies using the same band.
• Utilization of different bands in the frequency spectrum.

The figure above describes the inital envisioned industrial scenario:

• From the communication perspective:
  • An LTE access point is covering the whole factory area
  • The whole area is subdivided into  subcells covering a production line with several sensors and actuators.
  • The subcells might be controled / coordinated by a local access point.
  • The sensors / actuators itself might also communicate directly.
• From the automation perspective:
  • Similar to the communication there also exists a hierarchy
  • While the the factory controller allows to configure / monitor all production lines, the local controller allows to configure a single production line.
  • Inbetween both controllers there might be another controller such as a floor controller.

Publications

Please visit the project website to find a list of KoI publications.