Wi-Fi HaLow (IEEE 802.11ah) is a new wireless standard that will truly enable the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) on plants, in production or warehouses. With Wi-Fi HaLow thousands of battery-powered sensors & actuators can be securely connected to a single Access Point (AP). It is designed to be the long range, low power connection that will transform IoT as we know it.
Industrial businesses have been utilizing Internet of Things technologies for many years. The application of IoT technology to industry enables improvements in productivity leading to higher quality of goods and processed materials. However, the deployment of IoT technology in industry has been restricted by the practical and financial limitations of the connectivity technology available today. That is about to change. Wi-Fi HaLow's unique combination of secure, long reach, low power and high wireless connectivity increases the number of process automation functions vastly.
Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) are typically installed at the edge of a plant – with a hard-wired connection. In limited applications, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN solutions have been deployed to connect end-points where line power is available, and distance from the Wi-Fi AP is short – within 100m.
In the absence of the new low-power, long-distance Wi-Fi HaLow, Industrial IoT vendors of wireless solutions have been struggling. Many technologies today are complex mesh networks, deriving from IEEE 802.15.4 radio platforms such as Bluetooth or Zigbee. These solutions were invented as Personal Area Networks (PANs) for body-worn or short-range products like headphones and light bulbs. Mesh networks, built upon these 2.4GHz radio devices often come with incomplete Media Access Control (MAC) architectures and therefore suffer from severe congestion or latencies. Technologies like Bluetooth that advertise 32,000 addressable nodes, or Zigbee's touted 65,000 nodes, actually have very low capacity in large mesh environments.
Furthermore, the use of PAN technologies requires additional layers of protocol gateways or hubs to convert data to L3 packets for connections over the internet.
Wi-Fi HaLow was designed to be IP addressable, high capacity, and long range from the start, which makes it an appropriate wireless LAN technology for Industrial Process and Control functions. HaLow includes a full MAC capability, higher data bandwidth and stronger authentication/encryption security protocols. On top of that, it reaches longer distances at lower power, and offers L3 capability out of the box. The standard supports 8,191 nodes per Access Point, with a star network topology which guarantees low network congestion and low latency. Wi-Fi HaLow by Morse Micro achieves this by focussing on four aspects – distance, power, spectral efficiency, and security.
THE RIGHT ARCHITECTURE
Distance and Power:
IEEE 802.11ah, or Wi-Fi HaLow, was purposefully designed to address use cases which traditional Wi-Fi has missed. The lower sub-GHz frequencies and narrower band RF channels of HaLow provide 10x the reach of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi – at the same transmitter power levels. A HaLow AP can cover 100x the area, and 1000x the volume of traditional Wi-Fi APs. It also allows for ultra-low-power modes, so that battery-operated solutions can run on a coin cell for many years.
This means that gas and fluid meters could be placed in difficult locations where there is no power or nearby PLC. For example, placing a vibration monitor in a dangerous location to listen to a pump bearing can predict maintenance, and improve workers' safety. With HaLow, manufacturing and processing plants can be designed with more connections that are easier to add, move and change over time.
Noise Immunity in an unlicensed spectrum:
Wi-Fi HaLow operates in the global license-free Industrial Science and Medicine (ISM) radio frequency bands below 1GHz. Available frequency ranges vary around the world; 902MHz to 928MHz is available in the USA, 863MHz to 868MHz for Europe and 775MHz to 787MHz is used in China. Within the ISM band, Wi-Fi HaLow can use a variety of channel bandwidths; 1MHz, 2MHz, 4MHz, 8MHz, and 16MHz. The principle here is: the narrower the bandwidth, the farther the signals travel. Data is transmitted in packets spread across multiple sub-channels using OFDM modulation, enhancing performance in challenging RF environments. Forward Error Correction (FEC) encoding provides additional protection for recovering packets, ensuring an ultra robust connection.
Security:
Protection of the data packets that control factory operations is of utmost concern. Wi-Fi HaLow products are tested and certified to the new WPA3 standard – complying with highest security guidelines. Additionally, Morse Micro adds a unique unclonable fingerprint technology on each chip. With this, a secure boot and signed/encrypted data transfer to trusted platforms in the enterprise or cloud can be supported using a protocol like Transport Layer Security (TLS).
Morse Micro subscribes to the notion of continuous vigilance, applying best practice security for IoT throughout the lifecycle of a product. Over-the-Air (OTA) updates of firmware to improve security can be implemented with our HaLow products together with new feature improvements in our microcode, if needed.
Because Wi-Fi HaLow allows for fast firmware updates and has the data rates to do so, it can continuously be updated for security – unlike low data rate technologies. Large 802.15.4 mesh networks face congestion issues that limit their throughput and therefore hinder the delivery of firmware updates. In an industrial environment, where minimal downtime can be tolerated for firmware updates, HaLow has advantages as the faster and more reliable solution for OTA updates and security.
Morse Micro's Wi-Fi HaLow ICs comply with IEEE 802.11ah international standard, offering built-in advantages over proprietary PAN technologies. HaLow will improve Industrial IoT products' low-latency, secure connections to the internet.
