Data Acquisition

Wireless network 802.11 B or G communications are not recomended for critical operations. They have 3 major problems ( signal absorption, signal reflection and Interference ) aside from bandwidth and security restrictions. An industrial environment will tax WLAn to the extreme. There are enough problems with wired Robotics operation without throwing another layer of failure in the gears. Most Industrial environments are surrounded by metal walls etc and grounded like a Faraday cage (which is a hostile environment to WLAN). During our testing phase of WLAN networking at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre something as simple as using a microwave oven was enough to disconnect sessions within a 5o foot area. Bandwidth was soo restricted that we were lucky to have 1 MBPS each . Security over head ate up over 50% of the bandwidth. A dynamic environment where people and equipment are always moving and changing will wreake havoc with signal stength and connectivity. In our case management Ignored the suggestions of the entire IS dept and believed Nortel and consultants (who had their own agendas) . Over a year later we have been forced to hard wire critical parts of the hospital because of all the headaches creatd by crappy wireless communications (clipping and dropping of voice , dropped Data connections, signal loss, reflections, absorption, interference) . There are far too many failed experiments out there to rely 100% on wireless like we got sucked into ( the greedy leading the blind ).

Described troubles were given for hospital conditions. For plant it goes even worse. It seems only developing of new relevant civil and industrial engineering standards how to design buildings, how and where to place machines and high-frequency equipment (inverters) would bring something like order at this chaotic process up to now managed mostly by fashion and fake concerns about global warming.