Design and Implementation of a simulator in support of WirelessHART-based control systems development

Abstract: In Industrial automated process plants, the wired communication system is being replacing by the newly developed wireless communication system as it is easy to use, scalable, simple, reliable, and provide more flexibility for installing and operating process automation equipments. The WirelessHART network is becoming popular for wireless communication system in industrial automation plant system. However this network works on the TDMA bus arbitration technique. Each network device needs to be scheduled by the user (network operator) to allow the communications between the field devices and a gateway. Some companies like DUST have already manufactured the device hardware to implement this wireless communication system on industrial automation plant. A Simulator of this system is necessary to imitate the system performance on computer using the computer programming to simulate the result of each timeslot. Purpose of designing this simulator is to use the timeslots more efficiently and to offer collision free communications between network devices. It is may be time taking process to build the simulator in the beginning but at the end it provides cost and time effective solutions.  This report describes how the simulator has been designed for the system at various phases e.g. architecture, design, and implementation etc.