Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

A comprehensive survey of wireless body area networks on PHY, MAC, and network layers solutions

Recent advances in microelectronics and integrated circuits, system-on-chip design, wireless communication and intelligent low-power sensors have allowed the realization of a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN is a collection of low-power, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive lightweight wireless sensor nodes that monitor the human body functions and the surrounding environment. In addition, it supports a number of innovative and interesting applications such as ubiquitous healthcare, entertainment, interactive gaming, and military applications. In this paper, the fundamental mechanisms of WBAN including architecture and topology, wireless implant communication, low-power Medium Access Control (MAC) and routing protocols are reviewed. A comprehensive study of the proposed technologies for WBAN at Physical (PHY), MAC, and Network layers is presented and many useful solutions are discussed for each layer. Finally, numerous WBAN applications are highlighted

Middleware and communication technologies for structural health monitoring of critical infrastructures: a survey

Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) has become a priority for every country around the world with the aim of reducing vulnerabilities and improving protection of Critical Infrastructures (CI) against terrorist attacks or natural disasters, among other threats. As part of CIP, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is defined as the process of gathering basic information that allows detecting, locating and quantifying vulnerabilities early on (fatigue cracking, degradation of boundary conditions, etc.) thereby improving, the resilience of the CI. Recent advances in electronics, wireless communication and software are expected to open the door to a new era of densely connected devices sharing information worldwide, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), in which Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play an important role. The combined use of IoT/WSNs together with industrial sensors in SHM provide an ad-hoc, inexpensive and easy way of deploying a monitoring system, where data can be shared among different entities. SHM requirements are challenging and diverse and therefore several different technologies may be used in the same deployment. At the same time the use of a middleware can substantially simplify and speed up the development of applications for SHM. Taking into account the challenges of SHM systems, this paper provides a review of the most novel and relevant wireless technologies and a state-of-the-art middleware for WSNs focusing on SHM specific requirements

An IEEE 802.15.4 based adaptive communication protocol in wireless sensor network : application to monitoring the elderly at home

International audienceMonitoring behaviour of the elderly and the disabled living alone has become a major public health problem in our modern societies. Among the various scientific aspects involved in the home monitoring field, we are interested in the study and the proposal of a solution allowing distributed sensor nodes to communicate with each other in an optimal way adapted to the specific application constraints. More precisely, we want to build a wireless network that consists of several short range sensor nodes exchanging data between them according to a communication protocol at MAC (Medium Access Control) level. This protocol must be able to optimize energy consumption, transmission time and loss of information. To achieve this objective, we have analyzed the advantages and the limitations of WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) technologies and communication protocols currently used in relation to the requirements of our application. Then we proposed a deterministic, adaptive and energy saving medium access method based on the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer and a mesh topology. It ensures the message delivery time with strongly limited collision risk due to the spatial reuse of medium in the two-hop neighbourhood. This proposal was characterized by modelling and simulation using OPNET network simulator. Finally we implemented the proposed mechanisms on hardware devices and deployed a sensors network in real situation to verify the accuracy of the model and evaluate the proposal according to different test configurations

A mobility enabled inpatient monitoring system using a ZigBee medical sensor network

This paper presents a ZigBee In-Patient Monitoring system embedded with a new ZigBee mobility management solution. The system enables ZigBee device mobility in a fixed ZigBee network. The usage, the architecture and the mobility framework are discussed in details in the paper. The evaluation shows that the new algorithm offers a good efficiency, resulting in a low management cost. In addition, the system can save lives by providing a panic button and can be used as a location tracking service. A case study focused on the Princes of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong is presented and findings are given. This investigation reveals that the developed mobile solutions offer promising value-added services for many potential ZigBee applications

Wireless Sensor Networks

The aim of this book is to present few important issues of WSNs, from the application, design and technology points of view. The book highlights power efficient design issues related to wireless sensor networks, the existing WSN applications, and discusses the research efforts being undertaken in this field which put the reader in good pace to be able to understand more advanced research and make a contribution in this field for themselves. It is believed that this book serves as a comprehensive reference for graduate and undergraduate senior students who seek to learn latest development in wireless sensor networks