The Industrial Wi-Fi Shop Podcast – Ep. 9 Wi-Fi Fight Club!

Video Description

• CWISA Guide Giveaway details • There are two copies of the Certified Wireless IoT Solutions Administrator (CWISA) study/reference guides • Winners will be drawn randomly on episode 10 (episode title TBD) • ONE winner will be from IT • ONE winner will be from OT • Click the link below to enter the drawing! (One entry per person) • —＞  https://forms.gle/eE4rYtixhbppyMti8  ←- (Link now inactive) • WiFi6 and Mobile Robots:  AS/RS, Conveyors, AGVs, AMRs, Automotive Skillet Lines, Electrified Monorails…. All have one thing in common:  THEY ROAM….  A lot! • Challenges going to WiFi6 • The OT traffic is different than IT. • Instead of pushing big-huge files through the air, mobile robot applications need to move lots of small files – rapid fire, fast! • PLC-to-PLC communication. • The reliable, uninterrupted, consistent nature of the OT traffic is different with mobile bots.  • The OT networks are different. • Think 20ms RPI, so the roam time has to be a fraction of that. • The generation level of the WiFi doesn’t necessarily matter.   … except for 6E (that “E” is really nice). How will we handle the common need for “purpose built” antennas/ signal reciprocity. For example a linear stacker crane usually only needs directional/ bi-directional antennas. No external antennas means you waste energy. The power differential is also a concern. • The changes in generation levels focus on more volume of data thru the air. • The changes are not necessarily focused on reliability. • The fast-roaming standard hasn’t changed. • 95% of the chips end up in enterprise IT, and the current roaming standard satisfies that IT market. • Adding video, bandwidth, machine learning, etc. is important to enterprise IT, usually not to the bots.   • The ProSoft radios do not support multiple SSIDs, on purpose.  The idea is to have the SSID dedicated to the robot “fleet” network.  Any additional WiFi required nearby will be handled by a completely different AP. • Automotive skillet lines and AS/RS roaming bots don’t need that.  They need really, really reliable connections and ultra-fast roams. • Think Safety I/O • Think CIP Safety, ProfiSafe. • Think 20ms RPI and 40ms timeouts. • ProSoft buys the RF modules like everyone else. • Ex:  We buy Qualcomm, package it, and sell it with our software running on it. I don’t know exactly how we do it, but somehow we hijack the chip and take control of many of the low-level decisions. • WiFi4 (802.11n) gave us access to the chip’s low-level functions.   • We could monitor data from the RF chip so our software makes the roaming decisions, not the chip.  The chip’s roaming standard is too slow. • We run our own calculations.  We had a lot of control, resulting in consistent roams under 10ms – often down to 2ms if the client and AP were both the ProSoft RLX2-IHNF-A. • We can roam on the same channel. • These are ProSoft’s killer features for...