Communication infrastructures in industrial automation: The case of 60 GHz millimeterWave communications

Wireless sensor networks for industrial automation applications must offer timely, reliable, and energy efficient communications at both low and high data rate. While traditional communication technologies between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are sometimes incapable to efficiently achieve the aforementioned goals, new communication strategies are emerging, such as millimeterWave communications. In this overview paper, the general requirements that factory and process automation impose on the network design are reviewed. Moreover, this paper presents and qualitatively evaluates the 60 GHz millimeterWave communication technology for automation. It is argued that the upcoming 60 GHz millimeterWave technology brings an enormous potential and can influence the design of the future communication infrastructures in factory and process automation.