Analysis of industrial production environments and derivation of a novel channel model towards optical wireless communication

Abstract

Today radio based wireless communication technologies offer limited performance, whereas optical wireless com- munication systems (OWC) propose potentially a high performant, scalable communication system conforming to real time conditions. However, current studies imply, that OWCs still lack the necessary performance and robustness level for most wireless applications in industrial production environments. In this approach several types of noises for free-space optical communication systems are empirically analysed in an accredited, exemplary industrial production environment. While the channel noise is usually modelled by the signal to noise ratio it is found that real environments cannot be approximated by the usual static additive white gaussian noise. In this approach the accumulated measurement data represents the spectrum variation of different locations and times relating to different types of noise sources. The implementation in a total channel model allows the optimization of OWC designs like the channel access scheme or the modulation type concerning performance and robustness. Furthermore an additional measurement setup is proposed, capable of measuring and classifying existing noise sources in order to serve the design of OWC systems in industrial production environments.