This paper presents improvements in the physical layer reliability of the IEEE 802.11be standard. Most wireless system proposals do not fulfill the stringent requirements of Factory Automation use cases. The harsh propagation features of industrial environments usually require time retransmission techniques to guarantee link reliability. At the same time, retransmissions compromise latency. IEEE 802.11be, the upcoming WLAN standard, is being considered for Factory Automation (FA) communications. 802.11be addresses specifically latency and reliability difficulties, typical in the previous 802.11 standards. This paper evaluates different channel coding techniques potentially applicable in IEEE 802.11be. The methods suggested here are the following: WLAN LDPC, WLAN Convolutional Codes (CC), New Radio (NR) Polar, and Long Term Evolution (LTE)-based Turbo Codes. The tests consider an IEEE 802.11be prototype under the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel and industrial channel models. The results suggest that the best performing codes in factory automation cases are the WLAN LDPCs and New Radio Polar Codes.

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Industry 4.0 aims to digitize industrial processes entirely, and wireless technologies represent one of the enablers for scalable and flexible communications. However, the current standards and proprietary solutions do not meet the industry's tight requirements in fundamental use cases such as Factory Automation (FA). One of the key research challenges towards replacing wired fieldbuses with wireless links is the design of techniques that enable real-time and deterministic behavior when transmitting short packets. Forward Error Correction (FEC) techniques are critical to this objective, and coding/decoding algorithms must comply with reliability and low latency specifications. This paper surveys existing FEC techniques for short packet transmissions. Compared to other survey papers in the field, we propose several FEC candidate techniques specifically suitable for FA wireless systems. We explore four of these techniques, also examining hardware architecture proposals. The paper proposes a methodology to evaluate their latency and reliability performance. We finally discuss the lessons learned and challenges for future research.

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