Wi-Fi QoS Enhancements for Downlink Operations in Industrial Automation Using TSN

Communication technologies on the industrial automation domain are in constant evolution. Demanding industrial automation applications require real-time communication with high-reliability, determinism, redundancy, synchronization, and low-latency. A technology meeting these requirements is the Ethernet-based Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). A wireless complement to TSN would enable mobility, ease of installation and quick deployment to industrial networks. This paper investigates Wi-Fi for this purpose. The study is focused on improving the Quality of Service of Wi-Fi for downlink with MAC layer modifications while analyzing the jitter and delay performance of the network. Simulation results show that a new access category for time-critical traffic improves the performance and creates an opportunity to use TSN and Wi-Fi technologies for several industrial automation use cases.