Multi-Gigabit Millimeter-Wave Industrial Communication: A Solution for Industry 4.0 and Beyond

Industry 4.0 and 5.0 are paradigms of digitalization and intelligentization. The huge available bandwidth and the least spectral interference in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band can pave the way for a wide range of new industrial automation capabilities. Sophisticated industrial applications such as industrial Internet of Things, time-sensitive networking (TSN), intelligent logistics, product tracking, remote visual monitoring and surveillance, image-guided automated assembly and automatic fault detection require high bandwidth, reliability and low latency which can be ensured using the mmWave band. In this paper, we address the physical layer (PHY) requirements of industrial communication from the viewpoint of Industry 4.0 and beyond, while highlighting the key performance indicators. This paper proposes a 60 GHz mmWave antenna system with high reliability and low latency, making it ideally suited for industrial IoT and communication. The proposed novel antenna system is designed to cover the entire 9 GHz bandwidth of the 60 GHz standard spectrum (57 to 66 GHz) with a single element peak gain of 8.2 dBi. It provides high gain and efficiency across all four channels of 60 GHz communication from 57.24 GHz to 65.88 GHz, each channel with 2.16 GHz of bandwidth. Moreover, the simulated achieved beamforming gain of the proposed antenna system reaches 16.1 dBi, which satisfies the high gain requirement for 60 GHz multi-gigabit industrial communication. The proposed antenna system is a promising physical layer candidate suitable for communication standards such as WiGig IEEE802.11ay, IEEE802.11ad, IEEE802.15.3c, ECMA-387 and WirelessHD to ensure multi-gigabit wireless communication at 60 GHz ISM band for factory automation and industrial applications.