An Analytical Model for Wireless Mesh Networks with Collision-Free TDMA and Finite Queues

Wireless mesh networks are a promising technology for connecting sensors and actuators with high flexibility and low investment costs. In industrial applications, however, reliability is essential. Therefore, two time-slotted medium access methods, DSME and TSCH, were added to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. They allow collision-free communication in multi-hop networks and provide channel hopping for mitigating external interferences. The slot schedule used in these networks is of high importance for the network performance. This paper supports the development of efficient schedules by providing an analytical model for the assessment of such schedules, focused on TSCH. A Markov chain model for the finite queue on every node is introduced that takes the slot distribution into account. The models of all nodes are interconnected to calculate network metrics such as packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and throughput. An evaluation compares the model with a simulation of the Orchestra schedule. The model is applied to Orchestra as well as to two simple distributed scheduling algorithms to demonstrate the importance of traffic-awareness for achieving high throughput.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure

Partner selection in indoor-to-outdoor cooperative networks: an experimental study

In this paper, we develop a partner selection protocol for enhancing the network lifetime in cooperative wireless networks. The case-study is the cooperative relayed transmission from fixed indoor nodes to a common outdoor access point. A stochastic bivariate model for the spatial distribution of the fading parameters that govern the link performance, namely the Rician K-factor and the path-loss, is proposed and validated by means of real channel measurements. The partner selection protocol is based on the real-time estimation of a function of these fading parameters, i.e., the coding gain. To reduce the complexity of the link quality assessment, a Bayesian approach is proposed that uses the site-specific bivariate model as a-priori information for the coding gain estimation. This link quality estimator allows network lifetime gains almost as if all K-factor values were known. Furthermore, it suits IEEE 802.15.4 compliant networks as it efficiently exploits the information acquired from the receiver signal strength indicator. Extensive numerical results highlight the trade-off between complexity, robustness to model mismatches and network lifetime performance. We show for instance that infrequent updates of the site-specific model through K-factor estimation over a subset of links are sufficient to at least double the network lifetime with respect to existing algorithms based on path loss information only.Comment: This work has been submitted to IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications in August 201

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

Performance of direct-oversampling correlator-type receivers in chaos-based DS-CDMA systems over frequency non-selective fading channels

In this paper, we present a study on the performance of direct-oversampling correlator-type receivers in chaos-based direct-sequence code division multiple access systems over frequency non-selective fading channels. At the input, the received signal is sampled at a sampling rate higher than the chip rate. This oversampling step is used to precisely determine the delayed-signal components from multipath fading channels, which can be combined together by a correlator for the sake of increasing the SNR at its output. The main advantage of using direct-oversampling correlator-type receivers is not only their low energy consumption due to their simple structure, but also their ability to exploit the non-selective fading characteristic of multipath channels to improve the overall system performance in scenarios with limited data speeds and low energy requirements, such as low-rate wireless personal area networks. Mathematical models in discrete-time domain for the conventional transmitting side with multiple access operation, the generalized non-selective Rayleigh fading channel, and the proposed receiver are provided and described. A rough theoretical bit-error-rate (BER) expression is first derived by means of Gaussian approximation. We then define the main component in the expression and build its probability mass function through numerical computation. The final BER estimation is carried out by integrating the rough expression over possible discrete values of the PFM. In order to validate our findings, PC simulation is performed and simulated performance is compared with the corresponding estimated one. Obtained results show that the system performance get better with the increment of the number of paths in the channel.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft