Wireless High-Performance Communications: The Challenges and Opportunities of a New Target

Wireless networks for industrial control have long been considered a good technical solution for companies because of reduced costs and improved long-term reliability. However, critical applications in the Industry 4.0 era demand high performance (HP) in reliability and latency. Existing industrial wireless solutions are not able to meet these requirements because they are built on general-purpose chips and standards. We propose a new paradigm we call WirelessHP, which relies on a customized protocol stack to achieve a multi-gigabyteper-second data rate, submicrosecond latency, and ultrahigh reliability. We show the latest progress in this direction, outline the future challenges, and appeal for collaborations on many topics.