A second issue is that every warehouse has multiple
pieces of mobile equipment. Providing coverage to workers on mobile equipment
or the mobile equipment itself requires the ability to roam in and out of cell
sizes very quickly. The metal shelving blockages can make this extremely
difficult. This quick change in connectivity is constantly happening as the
mobile equipment is always moving in and out of various corridors. The need for
overlapping cells and the ability to stay connected at all times is a growing
need, as devices and tools used in warehouses are becoming smarter and more
precise.
“As with any industry, there is a growing need for
greater efficiency and cost savings. A lot of the efficiency drivers in
warehousing are leveraging various IIoT technologies and software. These
technologies all need improved and seamless connectivity, driving the need for
uninterrupted coverage,” says Teresa Huysamen, Wireless Business Unit Executive
at Duxbury Networking, local distributors of Rajant technology.
Blockages of potential RF signals can easily turn a
10 Wi-Fi node warehouse into a 40 or 50 node warehouse as corridors need
coverage for devices like hand scanners or mobile equipment fleet management
systems. The traditional Wi-Fi solution is to add more APs, often with each of
these Aps being hardwired with Ethernet or fibre optic cable, making the
deployment of each new node more expensive and time consuming to deploy.
Huysamen explains that in a Rajant Kinetic Mesh®,
only a few nodes need to be wired into the local area network. By wiring a few
nodes, Rajant utilises its proprietary protocol, Automatic Protocol Tunnelling
(APT). APT is a wired protocol that allows for multiple nodes to be connected
into the same subnet, while providing loop prevention, and thus allowing for
multiple LAN ingress points for information flowing from the warehouse flow to
the wired network in the building.
Using Rajant, the infrastructure of the warehouse
is much stronger and of equal number to that of the Wi-Fi deployment in Figure
1 — 10 nodes. By placing nodes on mobile assets in Figure 2, it allows for
extended mobile coverage to cover all areas of the warehouse floor. In
addition, each vehicle and infrastructure node double function as a backhaul
device; building an even more robust network in a tough environment. When using
Rajant in the warehouse with shelves, using both mobile assets and fixed infrastructure
points, the total difference is approximately half of the number of nodes when
using Rajant versus traditional Wi-Fi.
Figure 1. The image above is using those same 10
nodes in the empty warehouse. A filled warehouse presents a much more
challenging environment. The traditional Wi-Fi deployment has trouble covering
the corridors with the equipment deployed. Clients on mobile machines are
unable to connect and entire corridors are left without coverage.
Rajant
BreadCrumbs® utilise an improved duplex meshing that prevents Rajant Kinetic
Mesh® networks from losing half of the bandwidth per hop. Rajant’s proprietary
protocol called InstaMesh® allows packets to be received on one wireless
interface and transmitted on another, and therefore they do not suffer the
half-duplex issues other Wi-Fi vendors may experience. This capability allows
Rajant to utilise wireless communications in hard-to-reach places without
running any fibre or CAT 5/6 cable, and automatically route data through other
peers back to a LAN ingress.
Mobility
at its finest
With
Rajant, the network provided is flexible and reliable in multiple ways. First,
Rajant can equip forklifts or mobile vehicles with Rajant BreadCrumbs®. By
doing so, Rajant can provide a mobile infrastructure in the warehouse that is
much more powerful than any client device trying to roam. These mobile
infrastructure nodes act as mobile APs and communication bridges/repeaters in
areas where communications may be weak or incomplete in coverage. Rajant also
utilises machine-to-machine communications, where each forklift or
infrastructure node can communicate locally. With InstaMesh®’s dynamic routing
protocol, packets are not required to flow in and out of a wired network or go
through a route bridge or ‘smart node’, while also improving coverage with
mobile infrastructure.
Instead
of a low-powered client device like a table handling roaming, the high power
Rajant BreadCrumbs® maintains multiple connections to every other piece of
mobile infrastructure piece in range, eliminating the need to roam, and by
extension, the chance for packets be dropped or lost. The advantage of turning
a high-demand autonomous piece of equipment — a networking nightmare — into a
mobile piece of infrastructure, is a key reason that the Rajant solution is the
preferred worldwide when using smart and autonomous solutions.
Everyday
more warehouses are moving toward smart and artificial intelligence (AI)
solutions. These smart and AI solutions are highly precise pieces of equipment
that need constant communication to function properly and provide a high level
of safety for workers near the equipment. The connection requirements can vary
based on the application and the piece of equipment used, but a general
autonomous solution will require a network connection of about 4-5 Mbps, no
less than 25ms of latency and no less than four packets dropped in a row. The
four packets dropped in a row is far and above the most difficult requirement
to achieve and is directly related to workplace safety. If the autonomous
vehicle is no longer connected nor being tracked, the location of that
equipment cannot be guaranteed, resulting in a stoppage of work and a shutdown
of other equipment.
Rajant
is a reliability-based mesh networking system, using the patented InstaMesh®
protocol, built around providing wireless service in the toughest areas on the
planet. By using the mobile assets, increased range, rapid deployment, and the
ability to function as a backhaul and access point simultaneously, Rajant can
achieve a multifunctioning, robust, rapidly deployable, self-healing, Kinetic
Mesh® network.
“Clients are increasingly open to pursuing smarter mesh solutions to solve their warehouse connectivity issues. Adoption is still in the early phases in certain markets, but as global warehousing becomes increasingly autonomous, the demand is growing. As warehousing can produce variable RF challenges, customers often request site surveys and Proof of Concepts before a full deployment,” says Huysamen.
How is Kinetic Mesh® different to Wi-Fi coverage?
- Rajant wireless mesh networks are not
traditional networks.
- They are
uniquely designed for environments and applications where client devices
and even the network itself are in a state of constant change and motion.
- Rajant
utilises a multi-frequency, multi-peer mesh connection to give every node
in the network the ability to talk to each other using multiple radios
simultaneously.
- Each node,
or BreadCrumb®, acts as a smart wireless device, maintaining connections
to every other BreadCrumb® that can be connected wirelessly or wired.
- Packets
will always have a path home, even in the toughest environments.
- Rajant
BreadCrumbs® utilise a more powerful EIRP than traditional Wi-Fi.
- Rajant
radios have a max transmit power of 28dBm.
- Rajant
standard antennas are 5dBi for 2.4 and 6dBi for 5.8 (compared to a
traditional integrated antenna in standard Wi-Fi access points of 3-4dBi).
- Rajant antennas are standalone for the radio.