Evaluation of DECT for low latency real-time industrial control networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have revolutionized the industrial networks by enabling wireless sensing and control to the machine parts where wiring is impossible. However, new challenges in terms of communication reliability and latency, appear with the advances in the industrial wireless control systems. Existing standards are found inadequate to support many of these demanding situations as most of those are based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which is unable to provide high communication reliability with low latency (milliseconds). Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), a communication standard developed by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), seems to support the timing and reliability requirements of modern industrial wireless control networks. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of DECT in various industrial environments and found that it can maintain excellent communication reliability between sensors and control centre with low latency in such scenarios.