On the use of IEEE 802.11n for industrial communications

In the last years, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs (WLANs) have proved their eectiveness for a wide range of real– time industrial communication applications. Nonetheless, the introduction of the important IEEE 802.11n amendment, which is commonly implemented in commercial devices, has not been adequately addressed in this operational framework yet. IEEE 802.11n encompasses several enhancements both at the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers that may bring considerable improvements to the performance of WLANs deployed in real–time industrial communication systems. To this regard, in this paper we present a thorough investigation of the most important IEEE 802.11n features, addressing in particular specific performance indicators, such as timeliness and reliability, that are crucial for industrial communication systems. To this aim, after an accurate theoretical analysis, we implemented a suitable experimental setup and carried out several measurement sessions to obtain an exhaustive performance assessment. The outcomes of these experiments, on the one hand revealed that the adoption of IEEE 802.11n can actually provide significant improvements to the performance of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN in the industrial communication scenario. On the other hand, the assessment allowed to select, among the various options of IEEE 802.11n, the parameter settings which may ensure the best behavior in this specific (and demanding) field of application.