MAC SCHEDULING IN INDUSTRIAL WIRELESS CELL-BASED MESH SENSOR NETWORKS

Abstract: Undergoing developments for the adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in automation industry is creating several research questions. The usage of wireless technologies in industrial environments requires real-time reliability and security. Many standards for WSNs and Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have been developed. The list includes WirelessHART [4], ISA100.11a [10], Zigbee [16], IEEE 802.15.4, and IEEE 802.15.4a etc.Recently a new network topology “Cell-Based Mesh Networks” [12] has been developed in an effort to make IWSNs feasible for large scale deployments in process automation industries. Cell-Based Mesh Network topology inherits the qualities of star-mesh topology and mesh topology, and also offers many additional features.Reliability of an IWSN significantly depends on the real-time scheduling of the network. During this thesis work a scheduling mechanism has been developed by exploiting the features of a Cell-based Mesh Network. The idea of superframes’ further partitioning into time-cells of 100ms duration is presented, these 100ms time-cells guarantees interlocking data transmission [9] within 100ms. The closed loop control data [9] transmission is guaranteed by assigning dedicated time-slots. The performance evaluation of the presented scheduling mechanism is done by considering two case studies i.e. oil-industry and paper & pulp industry.