Opportunities and Problems of Wireless Fieldbus Extensions

Many examples are known for the influence of technologies, originally made for consumer market, to industrial automation. The digital wireless communication technologies, mostly used for mobile telephony, are one of the most rapidly growing branches today. This paper shows that there is an actual need to introduce this technologies to the industrial automation. Many cases can be listed where today widely used fieldbus systems advantageously can be extended by wireless components. But the requirements of these different communication systems are very different as discussed in the paper. Radio technologies are introduced and a scenario is discussed which uses DECT to extend Controller Area Networks. Opportunities and problems of wireless fieldbus extensions are shown.