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Industrial Wi-Fi with Scott McNeil

In this episode, we are talking about Wi-Fi in the Industrial environment with Scott McNeil. Scott has great experience designing, deploying and troubleshooting Wi-Fi and these environments and share his experiences with us! We are also talking about how the Industrial 4.0 revolution will impact how we will be using Wi-Fi in an industrial environment. Enjoy!

You can go follow Scott on Twitter: https://twitter.com/americanmcneil

Agenda

  • Industrial Wi-Fi vs. Enterprise Wi-Fi
    • Wireless becoming critical (Industrial 4.0)
    • What is similar
      • The need for wireless connectivity
      • Standards based wireless protocols (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Cellular)
      • Physics of wireless
    • What is different
      • Environmental aspect (temperatures, humidity, dust…)
      • Equipment (IP66, IP67)
      • Rules of engagements
      • Interferences
    • Important metrics
      • Retry rate
      • Packet loss
      • Latency
      • Roaming delay
    • Wi-Fi 6 test in an industrial environment conducted by the WBA
  • Site Surveys in an industrial environment
    • When to perform them
    • What type of site surveys to perform
    • Finding unknown devices
      • Innocent items like printers and cellular hotspots
      • Intentional devices installed by vendors
    • Identifying other sources of inferences
  • Spectrum Analysis
    • You never know what you might find in these environment
      • Industrial microwave dryer
      • Infrared adhesive curing equipment
      • Strong electromagnetic energy generated by machines

Example of interference measured by Scott in the field:

Example of interference: infrared curing machine
Example of interference: microwave dryer

Links & Resources

Wireless Network Engineer and Owner at SemFio Networks. CWNE #180. Living in London ON Canada, born and raised in Dijon, France.

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