The wireless sensor networks for factory automation: Issues and challenges

The emerging technology of wireless sensor network (WSN) has changed the way people interact with the physical world. WSN produces myriad interdisciplinary research issues on information processing, control, communication and computation. It has also provided new paradigm for factory automation that has remarkable impacts on control, tracking, monitoring, and diagnostics of the manufacturing processes and equipments. This paper will provide a short survey on the research issues and implementation challenges coming with wireless networked control, distributed signal processing, condition-based maintenance and industrial efforts for standardization of communications, protocols and smart transducers.