5,672 research outputs found
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
Time Segmentation Approach Allowing QoS and Energy Saving for Wireless Sensor Networks
Wireless sensor networks are conceived to monitor a certain application or
physical phenomena and are supposed to function for several years without any
human intervention for maintenance. Thus, the main issue in sensor networks is
often to extend the lifetime of the network by reducing energy consumption. On
the other hand, some applications have high priority traffic that needs to be
transferred within a bounded end-to-end delay while maintaining an energy
efficient behavior. We propose MaCARI, a time segmentation protocol that saves
energy, improves the overall performance of the network and enables quality of
service in terms of guaranteed access to the medium and end-to-end delays. This
time segmentation is achieved by synchronizing the activity of nodes using a
tree-based beacon propagation and allocating activity periods for each cluster
of nodes. The tree-based topology is inspired from the cluster-tree proposed by
the ZigBee standard. The efficiency of our protocol is proven analytically, by
simulation and through real testbed measurements
Feedback Control Goes Wireless: Guaranteed Stability over Low-power Multi-hop Networks
Closing feedback loops fast and over long distances is key to emerging
applications; for example, robot motion control and swarm coordination require
update intervals of tens of milliseconds. Low-power wireless technology is
preferred for its low cost, small form factor, and flexibility, especially if
the devices support multi-hop communication. So far, however, feedback control
over wireless multi-hop networks has only been shown for update intervals on
the order of seconds. This paper presents a wireless embedded system that tames
imperfections impairing control performance (e.g., jitter and message loss),
and a control design that exploits the essential properties of this system to
provably guarantee closed-loop stability for physical processes with linear
time-invariant dynamics. Using experiments on a cyber-physical testbed with 20
wireless nodes and multiple cart-pole systems, we are the first to demonstrate
and evaluate feedback control and coordination over wireless multi-hop networks
for update intervals of 20 to 50 milliseconds.Comment: Accepted final version to appear in: 10th ACM/IEEE International
Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (with CPS-IoT Week 2019) (ICCPS '19),
April 16--18, 2019, Montreal, QC, Canad
Flow Allocation for Maximum Throughput and Bounded Delay on Multiple Disjoint Paths for Random Access Wireless Multihop Networks
In this paper, we consider random access, wireless, multi-hop networks, with
multi-packet reception capabilities, where multiple flows are forwarded to the
gateways through node disjoint paths. We explore the issue of allocating flow
on multiple paths, exhibiting both intra- and inter-path interference, in order
to maximize average aggregate flow throughput (AAT) and also provide bounded
packet delay. A distributed flow allocation scheme is proposed where allocation
of flow on paths is formulated as an optimization problem. Through an
illustrative topology it is shown that the corresponding problem is non-convex.
Furthermore, a simple, but accurate model is employed for the average aggregate
throughput achieved by all flows, that captures both intra- and inter-path
interference through the SINR model. The proposed scheme is evaluated through
Ns2 simulations of several random wireless scenarios. Simulation results reveal
that, the model employed, accurately captures the AAT observed in the simulated
scenarios, even when the assumption of saturated queues is removed. Simulation
results also show that the proposed scheme achieves significantly higher AAT,
for the vast majority of the wireless scenarios explored, than the following
flow allocation schemes: one that assigns flows on paths on a round-robin
fashion, one that optimally utilizes the best path only, and another one that
assigns the maximum possible flow on each path. Finally, a variant of the
proposed scheme is explored, where interference for each link is approximated
by considering its dominant interfering nodes only.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technolog
Towards Optimal Distributed Node Scheduling in a Multihop Wireless Network through Local Voting
In a multihop wireless network, it is crucial but challenging to schedule
transmissions in an efficient and fair manner. In this paper, a novel
distributed node scheduling algorithm, called Local Voting, is proposed. This
algorithm tries to semi-equalize the load (defined as the ratio of the queue
length over the number of allocated slots) through slot reallocation based on
local information exchange. The algorithm stems from the finding that the
shortest delivery time or delay is obtained when the load is semi-equalized
throughout the network. In addition, we prove that, with Local Voting, the
network system converges asymptotically towards the optimal scheduling.
Moreover, through extensive simulations, the performance of Local Voting is
further investigated in comparison with several representative scheduling
algorithms from the literature. Simulation results show that the proposed
algorithm achieves better performance than the other distributed algorithms in
terms of average delay, maximum delay, and fairness. Despite being distributed,
the performance of Local Voting is also found to be very close to a centralized
algorithm that is deemed to have the optimal performance
A Study of Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks
The seamless integration of low-power, miniaturised, invasive/non-invasive
lightweight sensor nodes have contributed to the development of a proactive and
unobtrusive Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN provides long-term health
monitoring of a patient without any constraint on his/her normal dailylife
activities. This monitoring requires low-power operation of
invasive/non-invasive sensor nodes. In other words, a power-efficient Medium
Access Control (MAC) protocol is required to satisfy the stringent WBAN
requirements including low-power consumption. In this paper, we first outline
the WBAN requirements that are important for the design of a low-power MAC
protocol. Then we study low-power MAC protocols proposed/investigated for WBAN
with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. We also review different
power-efficient mechanisms for WBAN. In addition, useful suggestions are given
to help the MAC designers to develop a low-power MAC protocol that will satisfy
the stringent WBAN requirements.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 7 table
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
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