In March 2022, the government announced a series of measures to respond to the recommendations of the 5G industrial mission.
While 1,500 LoRaWan IoT experts gathered in Amsterdam on September 22 and 23 for The Things Conference, it is becoming essential to accelerate the deployment of this new technology for the industry, which raises the question of the future of LoRaWAN.
IIoT connections: increasingly popular wireless links…
First, it is important to distinguish Industrial IoT, also called IIoT, from IoT for industry. Indeed, the IIoT concerns above all the use of data from production machines, with the aim of optimizing production processes by resolving hazards (quality, energy consumption, use of industrial assets, etc. ).
The IIoT, which consumes a wide variety of data, in large volumes and produced at the rapid pace of production, is above all a context for the application of big data technologies. The analysis is not done in the form of time series as is usually the case in IoT, but on a product axis with a pivot of transformation that relies on a digital twin of the production process. IIoT and IoT for industry are two areas of technology, both key in the 4.0 industrial transformation.
From the point of view of networks, if in the world of the IIoT, the wired connection currently largely dominates the market, we are seeing an evolution towards wireless links which offer more flexibility and make it possible, for example, to address the case of mobile robots. These robots (AGV) are increasingly used in the industrial and logistics world for the transport of components between stages of the production process. In addition, the production machines themselves are set to communicate wirelessly in the future to allow greater flexibility in the organization of the production space and its dynamic reorganization according to the products to be manufactured.
…but a technology that is still immature for the industry
There are not many technologies compatible with these use cases supporting the universality required by the diversity of sensors and machine manufacturers, supporting the volume of data with a high throughput and allowing the low latency necessary for controlling production equipment.
To date, Wi-Fi 6 dominates this field, but this technology is not very scalable in the industrial context. Indeed, coming from the world of consumers, it was not designed to guarantee a response time during the transfer of information. It is also too subject to external impacts that could be fatal to a production unit.
The future is therefore more oriented towards the use of private 5G, because this technology, which comes from the world of telecoms where the transmission of voice and image does not support variation in response times, provides real solutions in terms of quality of service. Indeed, beyond low latency, the industrial world needs quality of service on its networks to ensure, in real time, that orders sent to PLCs are taken into account.
Facing the LoRaWAN juggernaut
Does this mean that the future of wireless networks in the industrial world is confined to the sole use of 5G? Not really, indeed, if the field of IIoT, which relies on large volumes of data (big data) and supports highly critical processes should retain 5G in the first place, the field of IoT for l industry is quite different.
The IoT for industry indeed complements the collection of data in the industrial world beyond production equipment. These are environmental sensors used to contextualize production data, equipment that complements existing sensors, on the process or outside the manufacturing process. For example, they provide upstream data such as storage conditions for raw materials or downstream data on the use of manufactured products. The use cases are multiple, associated with the process or the safety of the industrial site or workers. To address this data collection effectively, the technologies must meet a number of criteria such as low cost, reduced maintenance, an inexpensive infrastructure and a wide availability of sensors that can be used in a public or private context, a generally preferred choice.
These characteristics are those of LPWAN technologies, primarily LoRaWAN already widely used in industry. Iot for industry should therefore be largely dominated by LoRaWAN in the future.
There is no universal wireless technology in the industry, as elsewhere, which can dominate all the others. Each technology has its own target use in relation to its capabilities and operating cost. It is necessary to ensure that each is used in the right context so as not to come up against its limits while benefiting from the best economic adequacy.