This paper mainly surveys the state-of-the-art on real-time communicaton in industrial wireless local networks(WLANs), and also identifys the suitable approaches to deal with the real-time requirements in future. Firstly, this paper summarizes the features of industrial WLANs and the challenges it encounters. Then according to the real-time problems of industrial WLAN, the fundamental mechanism of each recent representative resolution is analyzed in detail. Meanwhile, the characteristics and performance of these resolutions are adequately compared. Finally, this paper concludes the current of the research and discusses the future development of industrial WLANs.
