Prospects of wireless energy-aware sensors for smart factories in the industry 4.0 era

Research output: Journal contributionsScientific review articlesResearch

Authors

  • Olfa Kanoun
  • Sabrine Khriji
  • Slim Naifar
  • Sonia Bradai
  • Ghada Bouattour
  • Ayda Bouhamed
  • Dhouha El Houssaini
  • Christian Viehweger

Advanced sensors are becoming essential for modern factories, as they contribute by gathering comprehensive data about machines, processes, and human-machine interaction. They play an important role in improving manufacturing performance, in-factory logistics, predictive maintenance, supply chains, and digitalization in general. Wireless sensors and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide, in this context, significant advantages as they are flexible and easily deployable. They have reduced installation and maintenance costs and contributed by reducing cables and preinstalled infrastructure, leading to improved reliability. WSNs can be retrofitted in machines to provide direct information from inside the processes. Recent developments have revealed exciting possibilities to enhance energy harvesting (EH) and wireless energy transmission, enabling a reliable use of wireless sensors in smart factories. This review provides an overview of the potential of energy aware WSNs for industrial applications and shows relevant techniques for realizing a sustainable energy supply based on energy harvesting and energy transfer. The focus is on high-performance converter solutions and improvement of frequency, bandwidth, hybridization of the converters, and the newest trends towards flexible converters. We report on possibilities to reduce the energy consumption in wireless communication on the node level and on the network level, enabling boosting network efficiency and operability. Based on the existing technologies, energy aware WSNs can nowadays be realized for many applications in smart factories. It can be expected that they will play a great role in the future as an enabler for digitalization in this decisive economic sector.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2929
JournalElectronics (Switzerland)
Volume10
Issue number23
Number of pages22
ISSN2079-9292
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26.11.2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgments: Parts of this work have been done within the research training group Nitramon (100339427) funded by the European Union together with the state of Saxony.

Funding Information:
Funding: The publication of this article was funded by Chemnitz University of Technology.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Recently viewed

Projects

  1. Unesco Chair

Publications

  1. Das endlos bewegte Buch
  2. Diversität und Heterogenität
  3. Applying social-ecological system resilience principles to the context of woody vegetation management in smallholder farming landscapes of the Global South
  4. Nine Degrees of Uncertainty in Negotiations
  5. The 'Arab Spring' and the spiral model
  6. Concentrations in ambient air and emissions of cyclic volatile methylsiloxanes in Zurich, Switzerland
  7. Lagrangian coherent sets in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection
  8. Die Zukunft des Englischunterrichts als Utopie
  9. Two temperatures for one thermostat: The evolution of policy attitudes and support for independence in Catalonia (1991–2018)
  10. Repräsentationsarbeit als performative Praxis
  11. Modellversuchsforschung reloaded
  12. In situ synchrotron radiation diffraction during solidification of Mg4Y and Mg4YxGd alloys (x - 1, 4 wt.%)
  13. Die Enden des Kabels
  14. Computing the City
  15. Co-Creation of Social Entrepreneurial Opportunities with Refugees
  16. Organization, atmosphere, and digital technologies
  17. Plant invasions into mountain protected areas
  18. Pitfalls and potential of institutional change: Rain-index insurance and the sustainability of rangeland management
  19. Power and Policies in and by the Arts - Introduction
  20. Of housewives and feminists
  21. The History of Music Production
  22. Verwundbarkeit
  23. Quo vadis, Computer ?
  24. Subsistence, Substitutability and Sustainability in Consumption
  25. Textverstehen als Voraussetzung für erfolgreiches mathematisches Modellieren
  26. Perspectives on new venture creation
  27. Temporal changes in vertebrates during landscape transformation