Redundancy approach to increase the availability and reliability of radio communication in industrial automation

By the use of radio communication in industrial environments the influence of multi-path propagation is a fundamental problem especially for safety-related applications. The prevailing locally variation of field strength is hardly predictable and continuously changing. A conception with a wireless redundant data transmission was developed as an approach to reduce the problematic influences. A lot of preliminary investigations in real test environments with different ISM-Radio bands are necessary for this concept. A combination of space and frequency diversity was indicated as a most suitable solution. With this multiple radio channel concept a remarkable improvement of the availability of the radio link can be achieved.