Architecture for a Fully Distributed Wireless Control Network

We demonstrate a distributed scheme for control over wireless networks. In our previous work, we introduced the concept of a Wireless Control Network (WCN), where the network itself, with no centralized node, acts as the controller. In this demonstration, we show how the WCN can be utilized for distillation column control, a well-known process control problem. To illustrate the use of a WCN, we have utilized a process-in-the-loop simulation, where the behavior of a distillation column was simulated in Simulink and interfaced with an actual, physical network (used as the control network), which consists of several wireless nodes, sensors and actuators. The goal of this demonstration is to show the benefits of a fully-distributed robust wireless control/actuator network, which include simple scheduling, scalability and compositionality