FITS: Entwicklung von Standardtests zur einheitlichen Bewertung industrieller Funklösungen

The goal of this research project was to develop appropriate standard test cases for a unified evaluation of the time and error performance of industrial wireless solutions with respect to selected classes of industrial applications. Especially, the following issues were addressed:

•     Improve product assessment with validated methods and models.
•    Support quality management by systematic approaches.
•    Support realization of reliable wireless systems.
•    Avoid unprofitable investment.

Fundamental parameters for time and error assessment such as transmission and update time, packet error rate and availability were derived as basic prerequisites. The 95 % percentile for transmission time and the standard deviation for update time were selected as appropriate statistical time measures.

The successfully developed test procedures of this research project enable manufacturers to evaluate the application-specific performance of their wireless systems in an early stage of development. Due to the fact that emulator-based test procedures are deterministic and thus reproducible, manufacturers can perform comparison measurements between different hardware and software versions. In real environments this is not possible.

We propose the performance classes A, B, and C (see logo in Figure 1) with additional information concerning total and time-dependent availability (Table 3). This enables manufacturers and customers to develop and select an optimal wireless solution for specific application areas.