Wideband OFDM-based Communications in Bus Topology as a Key Enabler for Industry 4.0 Networks

The Industry 4.0 paradigm conceives a cyber-physical supporting framework for the manufacturing processes in smart factories. In this context, solutions concerning the wired communications at the field-level have been reported which utilize either fieldbuses, which exhibit a huge distance range but a reduced data rate in a bus topology, or Ethernet-based technologies, which provide an increased data rate but reduced distance in a ring topology. To overcome this shortage, we propose the use of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to significantly increase the achievable data rates over large distances in industrial bus systems. Also, we establish a novel methodology to compute the signal-to-noise ratio between arbitrary pairs of nodes, which in turn allows to compute the communication capacity. Our wideband system was validated by connecting up to 32 nodes in the distance range 100 m–1 km. Compared to fieldbuses, the results of the proposal exhibit an amazing improvement in data rate of about fifty times for 100m distance and more than ten times for 0.5 km. Moreover, with respect to Ethernet-based solutions, the results show a relevant improvement in the data rate of around five times for 100 m distance, but Ethernet-based systems cannot go beyond this distance, to which our proposal is not limited.