Industrial Use of Bluetooth

16th August 2011

connectBlue AB

ES Admin

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Whitepaper

Industrial plants consist of many devices interconnected in different ways. It might be simple data collection units (I/Os) without any built-in intelligence, more intelligent devices (for example sensors with built-in intelligence, single-loop controllers or programmable controllers) and supervisory systems (used as HMI, for data logging and supervisory control). These types of devices are interconnected using many different communication protocols and medias, which may in some cases be replaced with Bluetooth wireless technology.

This paper discusses how Bluetooth may be used to connect these devices with each other. It also describes some specific requirements on the Bluetooth technology within this area. In this paper I have divided the industrial use of Bluetooth into four different categories:

1. Serial cable replacement. Replace the serial cable of today with a wireless

Bluetooth link.

2. Combine Bluetooth and Internet technologies. Make use of the extra CPU power

added by the Bluetooth implementation to give an added value to the device for

example a built-in WEB-based user interface.

3. Industrial Access Points. Access Points are used to connect several Bluetooth

devices to the traditional wired network. The wired network might be an IP-based

network (for example Ethernet) or an industrial fieldbus (for example Controlnet,

Profibus or others).

4. Wireless sensors and actuators. Connect the devices that are closest to the physical

process (sensors, actuators and simple analog/digital IO-devices) to supervisory

systems using Bluetooth.

The four categories interrelate with each other to create a full system combining wireless and

wired networks. The different use cases will be described using real-life configuration

examples.

Please download the whitepaper to continue reading.