KOI

As the German government promotes its high-tech strategy “Industry 4.0”, the integration of modern information technology in industrial automation and production processes becomes the focus of attention. KoI is set to deliver concepts for wireless transmission with high flexibility, high robustness and low latency for the short-range links between machines. These wireless concepts will serve as complement or alternative to established wired communication solutions like CANbus, Profibus or Profinet.

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute will develop a real-time capable radio interface and novel PHY and MAC layer approaches in cooperation with the project partners. Among the study items are the characterization of the radio propagation environment of industrial device-to-device (D2D) links, the design of new waveforms and the development of latency-optimized algorithms for D2D channel estimation and monitoring. The integration of these mechanisms into protocols for multiuser medium access shall be achieved. Finally, we plan to realize a prototypical implementation of key functionalities of the PHY on a demonstration platform.

Beside the radio interface, the efficient and robust coordination of the radio resources is to be explored. Local wireless communication cells have to be integrated into existing cellular infrastructures like LTE: In this context, it is part of the KoI project to investigate smart resource and interference management as well as authentication and security mechanisms for the automation and production cells.