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Validation of RF communication systems for Industry 4.0 through channel modeling and emulation

Industry 4.0 will be distinguished by the capacity of communication via IoT (Internet of Things) between machines to work in a decentralized way and to reach common decisions, resulting in what is called “smart factories”. The use of wireless communication systems will be essential to achieve it, but industrial environments present several challenges, such as: real time control, operation in environments with electromagnetic noise, and monitoring and synchronization of wireless nodes under the massive presence of metal elements in movement, which is a source of undesired wireless channel propagation effects like multipath, scattering, and shadowing. All these channel effects can be characterized carrying out measurement campaigns with channel sounders and obtaining channel models. Due to all of the above, an in-lab validation methodology of radio frequency (RF) communication systems is necessary to ensure a high availability and performance of the communication links. This can be achieved by the use of RF channel emulators, which allow different industrial channel models to be emulated in the laboratory, and therefore testing RF communication systems in realistic situations. Finally, by different metrics of the physical and media access control (MAC) layers, the behavior of RF communication systems can be assessed and even improvements can be suggested. In this paper, a validation methodology is presented which considers the previous aspects and provides essential know-how for the suitability of wireless communication systems for the future Industry 4.0 scenario.