WirelessCHARM: An open system low cost wireless marshalling module for industrial environments

Using wireless communication for sensor networks in industrial settings is now common practice. There are now thousands of industrial wireless sensor and control networks deployed. So the next questions are, “How far can we extend the reach of wireless technologies?” and “Can we utilize the same wireless technology to facilitate the coming of IoT in the industrial settings?” To address both of these questions wireless needs to leverage the wide range of existing sensors and devices that are already in the market. The solution should also be flexible. We report in this paper WirelessCHARM that enables different sensors and actuators to communicate wirelessly in an industrial setting. We describe the design and implementation of WirelessCHARM. A demonstration is built to integrate various types of devices into a commercial distributed control system.