Technical and economical assessment of the use of wireless gateways in industrial networks

The integration between industrial applications and industrial networks technologies is a required condition to share information at the factory level. Industrial networks are known for having different communication protocols. Therefore wired gateway technologies play an important role in the integration of different protocol stacks, wherever that integration is necessary. However, if there are physical constraints that make hard setting up a wired gateway, such as, difficult access for the required cabling, the use of a wireless gateway may present both a technical and an economical advantage when compared with wired gateway. This paper illustrates two industrial automation case studies, where both solutions use ELPRO wireless gateways proposed by TecWise Company®. The assessment results confirm that the use of wireless gateways may be an interesting solution for the industrial communication interconnection being analyzed. In this paper, we make a technical and economical assessment of the use of wireless gateways in industrial networks as a contributive solution for the integration of different industrial communication protocols.