The Industrial Wi-Fi Shop Podcast

Jan 22 2025 84 mins 2

Other Episodes

CWIDP Guide Giveaway details
- There are two copies of the Certified Wireless IoT Design Professional (CWIDP) study/reference guides
- Winners will be drawn randomly on episode 15 (episode title TBD)
- ONE winner will be from IT
- ONE winner will be from OT
- Click the link below to enter the drawing! (One entry per person)
- —> https://tinyurl.com/4nbz3rkv ← (its a google forms entry)

Welcome to the 1 Year Anniversary episode of the IWS!!

Upcoming Events!

Wi-Co
- -Chapel Hill NC- 5/14 -Scott presenting or maybe another hands on lab
- -Nashville 5/29- Jeremy possible presentation on CURWB

WLPC
- Jeremy – 10 talk on site surveys in machine cells and entertainment…

For those not familiar, what is Token Ring?

A LAN technology that uses a token to control data transmission between devices. It was created by IBM in the early 1970s and standardized as IEEE 802.5 in 1989

How it works
- A token is passed around a logical ring of devices.
- A device can only transmit data when it has the token.
- When a device has data to send, it captures the token and converts it to a “busy” token.
- The device then transmits a data frame, which travels around the ring until it
- reaches its destination.
- The destination device copies the data and sends an empty frame back around the ring.
- When the originating device receives the empty frame, it releases a new token for other devices to use.

Benefits
- Token ring ensures that every device gets a chance to transmit data, which makes the network more reliable and predictable.
- It eliminates collisions that can occur when multiple devices try to transmit data at the same time.

History of EchoRing and Technology Deep Dive
- James Gross and Christian Dombrowski laid the foundations of Echoring technology. James Gross was an assistant professor at RWTH Aachen University from 2008 to 2012 in the DFG-funded research center UMIC (Ultra High-Speed Mobile Information and Communication), working on a wireless, highly available real-time communication solution using the Token Ring protocol. Christian Dombrowski completed his PhD under Gross.
- Together, they used mathematical methods to prove the reliability of the technology. Christian Dombrowski started implementing Echoring on an FPGA-based Wireless Open-Access Research Platform (WARP) as part of his PhD thesis in 2010. They mainly used a PTA (Probabilistic Timed Automata) to evaluate the communication protocol. In 2012, a patent application was filed for the Echoring protocol. 2014, the system was stable for the first time and successfully tested in real scenarios in several BMBF-funded projects.
- 2015 James Gross and Christian Dombrowski founded the company R3 with Mathias Bohge and Florian Bonanati. The Echoring protocol is implemented on a ‘WiLink 8’ Bluetooth chip from Texas Instruments, making it ready for mass production. In 2017, the ‘Echoring Radio Board,’ the first product with Echoring technology, was released in collaboration with Schleicher.
- 2018, the seamless roaming function was implemented, and a patent was filed. End of 2019, the ‘Bridge E’ was launched at the SPS trade show in Nuremberg, Germany.

EchoRing Technology facts – The Lord of the Ring
- Echoring is a highly reliable, decentralized, wireless radio protocol capable of real-time use due to two measures.
  - The first measure is that Echoring is based on the idea of token ring technology. Each participant in the Echoring network acts both as a sender and as a receiver. In line with the concept behind the token ring, only the token holder can send and effectively prevent collisions. Also, the token ring ensures a deterministic sequence in the system, which is perfect for industrial control systems.
  - As a second measure, echoring achieves high reliability using an ‘echo system’ to achieve ‘massive cooperative communication .’In this case, should the connection between a sender and a receiver be interrupted, the signal is automatically sent to the actual receiver by a third network participant.
- The measures described as core functions allow for calculating the signal runtime and reliability, making Echoring suitable for use in time-critical industrial applications.
- An Echoring network consists of at least two network nodes. A third node is recommended as an echo station. The reliability of Echoring networks increases with the number of network nodes. We specify the maximum number of network nodes in one radio channel as 20.
- If more extensive networks are to be formed, individual Echoring networks can be operated as sub-networks and connected to create a more extensive network. Applications with mobile network nodes, such as skillets, overhead monorail, or AGV/AMR applications, can seamlessly switch from one sub-network to the next via roaming and handover.
- Echoring is transparent to the network technologies used and can be used for a wide range of technologies. Numerous field buses and industrial Ethernet technologies, such as PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, CIP Safety, Ethernet Powerlink, and CC-Link, can be transmitted via an EchoRing network.