Experimental Study of UWB Connectivity in Industrial Environments

Experimental results on the connectivity of IEEE 802.15.4-2011 ultra-wideband (UWB) devices are presented in two industrial scenarios: a large-size aircraft assembly hangar and a medium-size production hall. These measurements are the first ones reported for off-the-shelf UWB devices in such setting and shed light on the potential of UWB to support emerging industrial applications. By comparing the packet loss rate to well-established ZigBee devices, we show that UWB can largely reduce the need of relay nodes, contributing to a lower end-to-end latency. We argue that this, together with inherent features that are not easy to replicate by other physical layers, position UWB as a promising industrial communications technology.