PFI-TT: Developing a Configurable Real-time High-speed Wireless Communication Platform for Large-scale Industrial Control Systems

该创新技术转化合作伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是使过程工业能够完全接受工业4.0的概念，并将其制造工厂改造为智能工厂，其中智能传感和现场设备在现场广泛部署并无线连接，以提供实时高速过程监测，诊断和控制。这为更好地了解制造过程铺平了道路，从而实现高效和可持续的生产。低成本、实时和高速无线技术的商业可用性将使广泛的新应用在许多方面造福社会。正如普通WiFi技术改变了商业无线通信的格局一样，我们新的实时版本的WiFi将使工业应用成为可能，如先进的过程控制和制造、辅助远程机器人、高带宽健康监测、自动驾驶汽车安全保障等。 该PFI-TT项目还将为未来的创新和创业领导者提供全面的培训计划，以培养他们开展创新研究项目的能力以及有效的沟通和创业技能，从而产生重大的教育和社会影响。拟议的项目将解决现有无线通信网络的缺点，其不具备为大规模工业传感和控制系统提供确定性或高速实时通信的能力。 所提出的RT-WiFi协议将1）支持高达6 kHz的采样率，这对于大多数工业无线应用来说是足够的，这需要高度可预测的性能; 2）提供扩展到多集群设置以覆盖大型工厂的能力; 3）通过动态和分布式分组调度提供极高的可靠性，以自主适应嘈杂的工厂环境;以及4）通过鲁棒的网关设计容忍任何单点硬件/软件故障。可以设想，在该项目成功完成后，可以开发出成熟的RT-WiFi通信系统，以支持大规模高速工业无线控制网络中的大量可靠和动态实时流。这些独特的功能将使RT-WiFi成为理想的通信基础设施，不仅支持先进的过程控制系统，还支持机器人、自动驾驶汽车和高速机械过程等其他快速增长的行业领域。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to enable the process industries to fully embrace the concept of Industry 4.0 and revamp their manufacturing plants as smart factories, where intelligent sensing and field devices are pervasively deployed and wirelessly connected in the field to provide real-time high-speed process monitoring, diagnosis and control. This paves the way for a better understanding of the manufacturing process, thereby enabling efficient and sustainable production. The commercial availability of low-cost, real-time and high-speed wireless technology will enable a wide range of new applications benefiting society in many ways. Just as ordinary WiFi technology has transformed the landscape of wireless communication for business use, our new real-time version of WiFi will enable industrial applications such as advanced process control and manufacturing, assistive tele-robotics, high-bandwidth health monitoring, autonomous vehicle safety assurance, and others. This PFI-TT project will also enable a comprehensive training program for future leaders in innovation and entrepreneurship to develop their ability to conduct innovative research projects as well as effective communication and entrepreneurial skills, and thus have significant educational and societal impacts.The proposed project will address the drawbacks of existing wireless communication networks, which are not equipped with providing either deterministic or high-speed real-time communication for large-scale industrial sensing and control systems. The proposed RT-WiFi protocol will 1) support up to 6kHz sampling rates that is sufficient for most industrial wireless applications, which require highly predictable performance; 2) offer the capability for extending to multi-cluster settings to cover large factories; 3) provide extremely high reliability through dynamic and distributed packet scheduling for autonomous adaptation to the noisy factory environment; and 4) tolerate any single point hardware/software failures with robust gateway design. It is envisioned that upon the successful completion of this project, a full-blown RT-WiFi communication system can be developed to support a large number of reliable and dynamic real-time flows in large-scale high-speed industrial wireless control networks. These unique features will make RT-WiFi an ideal communication infrastructure to support not only advanced process control systems, but also other fast growing industry segments in robotics, autonomous vehicles and high-speed mechanical processes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.