Sources of disturbances on wireless communication in industrial and factory environments

Electrical and mechanical machinery, highly reflective industrial facilities and co-existing communication systems are the major sources of disturbances in wireless industrial applications. Characterization of industrial environments is important for the development of standards, to assess current and future deployment of wireless technologies, and to provide systems integrators and end user with guidelines. In this paper some deductions from measurements carried out at three industrial environments using traditional electric field strength, amplitude probability distribution (APD) and multipath time dispersion measurements are presented. These measurements have given surprising and interesting results.