A Novel Mobile and Hierarchical Data Transmission Architecture for Smart Factories

In a smart factory environment, a much larger amount of data are transmitted in the workshop networks bringing big challenges to data transfer capability and energy usage efficiency. In the workshop, two main networks, i.e., wired/wireless fieldbus networks and wireless sensor networks, are usually used to collect and transmit data separately; thus, this paper proposes a mobile and hierarchical data transmission architecture to integrate these two networks also taking advantages from the existing mobile intelligence in smart factories, such as automatic guided vehicles (AGVs), to implement a novel data and materials delivery scheme well suited for modern industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs). Simulation experiments demonstrated how the proposed approach, running within the IWSN, significantly increases data delivery efficiency along with achieving better energy usage, by 4 times, with respect to the separated networks without any mobile intelligence support.