All the Latest in Industrial Networking

R3 Solutions, the technology company specializing in the wireless, reliable, real-time transmission of industrial data, will release the “Summer Release” of its Wireless Ethernet Bridge in September, featuring many new and improved features. This release, along with the simultaneous launch of the new “Bridge E,” marks the start of a six-month software release cycle and a new design approach in which the proven EchoRing technology has been adapted even more consistently to the demands of industrial use.

“New name, new release, new features—proven reliability”—R3 Solutions presents the latest version of its EchoRing Ethernet Bridge, which will be called “Bridge E” going forward, with the “E” standing for EchoRing technology.

With the new name, a new era begins for R3 Solutions. Going forward, there will be two major software releases per year for R3’s products: a “Summer Release” with new, tested features for users and a “Winter Release” focused on system maintenance.

“With these release cycles, we aim to strengthen our position as a reliable partner for manufacturing automation and other industrial sectors and make the further development of our EchoRing technology more predictable,” explains Thomas Förste, Chief Product Officer at R3 Solutions.

Industrial functionality significantly expanded

The Summer Release of Bridge E incorporates experience gained from the use of EchoRing technology in many different industrial applications, such as robotics, mechanical engineering, and the automotive industry. “This allows us to consistently adapt our Bridge E and its software to industrial requirements,” emphasizes Thomas Förste.

The top priority for this release was to maintain the proven reliability and security of wireless transmission while integrating practical and user-friendly features.

Software development focused on simplifying the operation of Bridge E with significantly improved functionality. The new “Plant UI” control and configuration interface is the most visible change, enabling industrial users to centrally manage large-scale Bridge E installations.

The Plant User Interface is part of the now Windows-based Config Server, which enables configuration, update management, and device control. This new server software package eliminates the need for the previously required dedicated Config Server as additional hardware and makes setting up and maintaining the EchoRing network even easier.

Also new and in high demand is the “EchoRing Runtime Control Interface (ERCI).” The control interface is available directly in Bridge E and the Plant UI. It allows the status of Bridge E devices to be monitored via scripts and their functions to be adjusted during operation using control commands.

Starting with the Summer Release, data traffic in the EchoRing network can be controlled even more effectively and flexibly via Quality of Service. Five priority queues are available to prioritize traffic by class. Together with other detailed improvements, the developers at R3 Solutions were able to reproducibly improve reliability with regard to packet loss during data transmission (packet loss rate) by an order of magnitude to less than 10⁻⁷.

The developers at R3 Solutions have also further refined the functions for configuring and commissioning the Bridge. Firmware updates and configuration changes can now be performed remotely via the existing Ethernet connection without physical access to the hardware.

Starting with the summer release, the Bridge E can optionally be assigned a static IP address. This significantly reduces the boot time to approximately 5 seconds, ensuring that the Bridge E operates deterministically—that is, predictably—even during bootup.

Compared to its predecessor, the Bridge E features an optional second antenna on the hardware side, which enables seamless roaming in mobile applications such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs). While the first antenna is still logged into the current cell, the second antenna is already connecting to the next cell that the vehicle will pass through. The switch to the actively used antenna takes place in fractions of a second.

Roaming and handover were also a focus for developers on the software side. The new ERCI interface enables fine-grained control of the transition between network segments. Pre-calibrated handover scenarios can be saved in the configuration, ensuring a seamless segment transition in real time.

Strength Through the Corporate Group

R3 Solutions also offers proven reliability thanks to its corporate structure. As part of the Peppermint family and with numerous industrial partnerships, R3 Solutions is an established player in industrial networking. With the new version of the Bridge E and the significantly enhanced software, industrial users can now implement wireless applications that were previously impossible.

About R3

Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, R3 Solutions is a leading global provider of high-performance solutions for the wireless transmission of industrial data in a wide range of machine-to-machine communication applications. The EchoRing technology developed by R3 combines the reliability of a wired connection with the flexibility of a wireless network, with latencies of less than five milliseconds. Users of EchoRing technology already include well-known companies such as ABB, the BMW Group, and Pilz.

About EchoRing Technology

EchoRing technology was developed by Berlin-based R3 Solutions GmbH. It is based on the token-ring approach, which has proven itself in networking: All network nodes connected within a system continuously exchange information about their respective channel statuses, thereby automatically ensuring the optimal and delay-free flow of all data streams, even during brief, necessary channel changes. Latency and reliability are deterministic, meaning that the technology meets all requirements for ultra-reliable real-time communication (URLLC). EchoRing can wirelessly network virtually any industrial installation—existing or new—without significant setup effort, and supports numerous communication protocols such as PROFINET, Ethernet/IP, and many more. For each data source, all that is required is a compact Bridge E with an Industrial Ethernet interface, which, in conjunction with other bridges, replaces the existing wired transmission paths with wireless ones.