XML-based Middleware approach for industrial wireless communication systems

Many fields of the industrial automation can be already served by wireless technologies. Due to the different requirements regarding the reliability, latency, number of nodes, node density and range to communication systems there is no uniform standard for wireless communication covering all domains of automation. It is to be expected in the future on a strongly increasing number of radio technologies and protocol stacks on different platforms and operating systems. According to this uniform integration interfaces neither exist on the side of the radio technologies nor on that of classical control systems. For relaying between both systems the architecture and the structure of a convergence middleware are presented, which abstracts the technology-specific details and makes a uniform integration interface available for wireless industrial communication systems. Furthermore a system is presented, with which the integration of wireless technology into automation systems can be automated and thus contributes to the decrease of complexity.