Blockchain for reliable processes in industrial automation

Dominik Welte M.Sc., Fatemeh Ghovanlooy Ghajar M.Sc. M.S., Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dipl.-Ing. Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing. Axel Sikora

Blockchain technologies are not only much discussed for cryptocurrencies. The opportunities and problems of using them in an industrial environment have not yet been sufficiently researched. The Dipper – “Distributed IoT-Platforms for Safe Food Production – in Education, Research and Industry” project is making contributions to facilitate their use. A solution for securing food production in rural areas is being developed together with partners from the “Kwame Nkruma University of Science and Technology” in Kumasi (Ghana).

LPWAN radio technologies in the 2.4GHz band

Dominik Welte M.Sc., Fatemeh Ghovanlooy Ghajar M.Sc. M.S., Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dipl.-Ing. Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing. Axel Sikora

For the past few years Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) have emerged as key technolo-gies for the connectivity of many applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) combining low-data rates  with  strict  cost  and  energy  restrictions.  Especially  LoRa/LoRaWAN  enjoys  a  high  visibility on today‘s markets, because of its good performance and its open community. Originally LoRa was designed for operation within the Sub-GHz ISM bands for Industrial, Scientific and Medical applications. However, at the end of 2018, a LoRa-based solution in the 2.4GHz ISM-band was presented, promising higher bandwidths and higher data rates. Furthermore, it overcomes the limited duty-cycle prescribed by the regulations in the ISM-bands and therefore also opens doors to many  novel  application  fields. Also,  due  to  higher  bandwidths  and  shorter  transmission  times, the use of alternative MAC layer protocols becomes very interesting, i.e. for TDMA based-approaches  that  allow  the  usage  of  further  network  and  application  protocols.  This  article  shows  the  work  of  the  LongRange24  project  in  an  abridged  version  of  the  already  published IEEE paper [1].