Proceedings of the 29th Chinese Control Conference

July 29-31, 2010, Beijing, China

Analysis and Design of Real-time and Reliable Industrial Wireless

Control Communication Network and Protocol
TANG Zhong1, ZENG Peng2, WANG Hong2
1 Shenyang Institute of Chemical Technology, Shenyang 110142, P.R.China
E-mail: tangzhong_email@126.com
2 Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, P.R.China
E-mail: {zp, wang}@sia.cn

Abstract: Wireless communication technologies can bring great benefits to industrial automation systems. But because of
the high data losses and transmission errors caused by channel fading and interferences, the hard real-time and reliability
requirements of industrial automatic control are difficult to be guaranteed. An industrial wireless control communication
network and protocol is put forward. The functions of each protocol layer are introduced. Service differentiating, resource
reserving and cross-layer and cross-network schedule mapping mechanisms are used to provide the real-time and reliable
communications. The performance analysis shows it can satisfy the requirements of industrial field monitoring and control.
Key Words: Industrial Automatic Control, Industrial Wireless Control Communication Network and Protocol, Real-time,
Reliability, Performance Analysis

In industrial factories, automatic applications include

1 INTRODUCTION
Wireless communication technologies have the potential
of providing significant benefits for factories and
industrial automation systems. Wireless communication
can substantially reduce the cost and time needed for the
installation and maintenance of the large number of cables,
thus making plant setup and reconfiguration easier. It can
be used in harsh environments where chemicals,
vibrations, or moving parts exist that could potentially
damage any sort of cabling. It can also be used to coupling
any mobile subsystems to get the flexibility. Furthermore,
the tasks of temporarily accessing any of the machinery in
the plants for diagnosis or programming purposes can be
greatly simplified by wireless communication[1]. And
because of the low cost, low power consumption,
self-adapting, self-organized and peer-to-peer
communication features, wireless technologies can
provide more flexible and larger scale monitoring services
and give new application paradigms for industrial
automation systems.
Industrial wireless communication has drawn the attention
of standardization organizations, industry automation
companies and research institutes and universities. In
recent years, a lot of research efforts have been done in
industrial wireless communication technologies. Some
effectual results have been obtained. Wireless HART has
been published. ISA has been working on a series of
standards addressing the adoption of wireless
communication in different industrial factories. Wireless
Networks for Industrial Automation – Process automation
(WIA-PA) from China has been accepted as an IEC
standard.
monitoring, control and maintaining of the field production
processes and devices. Industrial wireless networks should
connect field devices such as sensors and actuators with
field controllers, as well as high level management
networks and man–machine interfaces, for instance,
SCADA in industrial automation systems and deliver filed
monitoring, control and maintenance data between the
devices. An important characteristic of these applications
is that the underlying communication networks must
satisfy strict real-time and reliability requirements,
otherwise loss of time and money or even physical damage
can result.
Because of the wireless open channel, channel fading,
outages and external interferences can cause much more
transmission errors and data losses. The real-time and
reliability requirements are more likely to be jeopardized
than they would be over a wired channel. For these
reasons, the published industrial wireless communication
standards just address the automatic field monitoring
applications and provide soft real-time data transmission
services for field measuring data. As for hard real-time
closed loop control automatic applications, there is no
effective industrial wireless protocol and standard
satisfying the requirements. Other commercial available
wireless communication technologies, such as
IEEE802.11, IEEE802.15.4 and wireless sensor network
(WSN), can not provide suitable communication services
for automatic control applications either. Without
supporting industrial field control, industrial wireless
communication is just a kind of industrial WSN. It can not
provide suitable and complete information delivery
services for industry automation systems and can not
really step into industry plants.

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Automatic control application is very important in
industrial plants. Designing real-time and reliable
communication networks and protocols for industrial
control applications is one of the key research issues and
the developing directions of industrial wireless
communication. In this paper, based on the work on WSN,
Chinese WIA-PA, wireless FF and ISA SP100, we
analyze the main functions of industrial wireless control
communication network and protocol, give out effective
implementing methods to support hard real-time and
reliable information transmission both for automatic field
monitoring and production process control.
2 REQUIREMENS OF INDUSTRIAL AUT-
OMATIC CONTROL APPLICATIONS
Industrial wireless control communication network and
protocol orients to automatic monitoring and control
applications of production processes. Analysis of
automatic tasks and performance requirements is the
designing guide to wireless control communication
network and protocol.
2.1 Industrial Automatic Control Application
Just like wired fieldbuses, industrial wireless control
networks lie in production field. They connect field
sensors, actuators and controllers to support automation
systems to fulfill monitoring, control and maintenance of
production process and field devices. Different field
devices exchange information through wireless channel
with each other and with upper level supervisory
computers, control systems and enterprise management
information systems. The measuring information of
production processes from sensors is passed to controllers
and control commands to actuators. The information of
production field is also delivered to the upper level
computers and maintenance and configuration information
is passed to the field devices from high level networks.
Then an industrial automation system is established and
automatic maintenance, monitoring and control tasks can
be implemented through the information interactions
between the field devices and computers.
Different from commercial and office networks, the
production processes in a plant are deterministic, so the
field devices, network topology and the communication
tasks are deterministic. The delivered information includes
signal alarm, measured data, such as temperature and
pressure, set value and control command, uploading and
downloading.
Automatic monitoring and control of production process
require strict real-time and reliability. The underlying
communication networks must provide real-time
information transmitting services that are both predictable
and reliable, i.e., make certain guarantees on eventual
delivery of packets and transmission times. Some
important characteristics of industrial control traffic are: 1)
presence of periodic traffic (bounded jitter between
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subsequent packets required), subject to deadlines; 2)
presence of important acyclic packets like alarms, which
need to be reliably transmitted with bounded latencies;
and 3) most packets are short, on the order of a few bytes.
2.2 Analysis of Wired Fieldbus Protocol
Wired fieldbuses are now the main communication
technologies in industrial automation. To support the
communication requirements of industrial automation
tasks, the protocols of most wired fieldbuses are usually
different from the ISO OSI communication reference
model and modifications are made according to the
requirements. For example, the protocol of Foundation
Fieldbus (FF) includes the Application Layer (APL), Data
Link Layer (DLL) and Physical Layer (PHL) and the
additional User Layer (USL) above the APL[2] (See Figure
1). The FF USL provides standard device models, user
application object models and their description and
organization technologies, such as standard function
blocks (FB), device description (DD) and its language,
object dictionary (OD), network and system management.
FF user layer The user layer
(FB,DD OD) (automatic object, device object)
Fieldbus Message
Specification (FMS)
The application
The application layer
layer Fieldbus Access Sublayer
(FAS)
management
The presentation
Security
and
layer
The session layer
The transport
layer
The network
layer
The network layer
The data link
layer
The physical
FF data link layer The data link layer
FF physical layer IEEE802.15.4 physical layer
layer
ISO OSI reference
FF H1 communication model Industrial wireless control
model communication model
Fig.1 Protocol model of FF and industrial wireless control
communication
The FF APL is divided into Fieldbus Message
Specification (FMS) and Fieldbus Access Sublayer (FAS).
FMS provides a group of services and standard message
formats for transmitting the information of user
applications and accessing the application objects and
their descriptions. FAS provides communication services
for FMS through virtual communication relations (VCRs).
The FF DLL specifies data transmissions between devices
in a field network. The communication activities of FF are
divided into predefined periodic and non-predefined
communication. The network channel access and
communication schedule are implemented by the link
active scheduler (LAS) through passing tokens. The
predefined periodic communications are initiated by
Compel Data (CD) tokens sent by the LAS periodically to
the devices according to the system schedule table. The
non-predefined communications are initiated by Passing
Tokens (PT) sent by the LAS with different priorities
between two predefined communications according to the
link active device list.
The PHL implements the mechanical and electrical
interfaces between field devices and fieldbus and provides
physical signals for the message sending and receiving.
There is no network layer in wired fieldbus protocols. The
communicating field devices are usually connected
together in the same network segment. Sensor data is
delivered to controllers and control commands to actuators
directly without forwarding. The communi- cation delay is
thus reduced and real-time performance is improved.
2.3 Problems with Current Wireless Standards
 Real-time and Reliability Support
Predefined periodic, non-predefined real-time automatic
tasks and non-real-time management and maintenance
tasks are the main communication activities in industrial
automation systems. Predefined periodic communica-
tions require hard real-time and non-predefined real-time
tasks need real-time and reliable communication services.
Industrial wireless control communication network and
protocol must satisfy their real-time and reliable
requirements. But in the published industrial wireless
standards, there is no corresponding mechanism to support
predefined periodic and priority-based communications. In
these standards, the DLL just provides CSMA/CA-based
channel access. The deterministic and real-time
requirements can’t be fulfilled. In IEEE802.15.4 and
IEEE802.11, although Guaranteed Time Slot (GTS) and
Point Coordinate Function (PCF) polling mechanisms are
offered to serve predefined tasks, but the deterministic can
not be guaranteed and communication delay and jitter are
too long[3,4]. Furthermore, low-power consumption is one
of the characteristic of wireless devices. Sleeping period is
involved in the communication processes to save power.
The sleeping period extends communication and sampling
cycle of control algorithms and thus influences the
performance of closed loop control.
 Packet Forwarding
In industrial wireless control networks, because of channel
fading, external interference and limitation of
transmission power, the communication distances are
usually short, i.e. several meters. And as for the harsh
environment of industrial field, some wireless field
devices can not communicate with each other directly
because of obstacles or interferences between the devices.
The communication information must be forwarded by one
or more nearby devices. Thus industrial wireless
communication networks are often multi-hop and the
information transmissions are multi-path to guarantee the
reliability. Mesh network is a common topology of
wireless communication. Packet routing and the Network
Layer are needed. Thus, communication delays and jitters
will be longer. The performance of predefined periodic
and hard real-time communications is more difficult to
guarantee than just in a single network segment or in a
one-hop network.
So, the absence of predefined periodic and priority
communication supports and corresponding real-time
routing method makes current wireless protocols not
suitable for industrial production process control.
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3 REAL-TIME AND RELIABLE PROTOCOL
Providing real-time and reliable transmission services are
QOS problems in traditional communication network. In
Internet, QOS are support mainly through resource
reservation and differentiate services[5]. The end-to-end
QOS is supported through network-centric and
end-device-centric methods[6]. In industrial wireless
control communication network and protocol, different
automatic tasks should be provided with different
communication services. Service differentiating, resource
reserving should be provided in each protocol layer and
cross-layer and cross-network QOS mapping mechan-
isms should be used to guarantee the real-time and
reliability communication requirements.
3.1 Wireless Communication Devices
The communication devices in industrial wireless control
networks are divided into field devices, handheld devices,
routing devices and gateways according to their functions.
Field devices include wireless sensors, actuators, and
controllers. Field and handheld devices are used for
monitoring, control and maintenance of production
processes and devices. Routing devices includes dedicated
wireless routers and some wireless field devices with
routing capability. They can forward packets from field
devices and other routing devices. Gateway connects field
and routing devices to upper level management and
supervisory networks.
Some wireless field devices require low power consum-
ption to guarantee long life of the battery. Other field
devices, which are involved in periodic communications,
and routing devices must communicate constantly and
don’t require saving power.
3.2 Network Topology
Different from wired fieldbuse, the messages of wireless
field devices are usually forwarded by one or more
intermediate devices. Multi-hop communications and
networks must be provided. Thus industrial wireless
control network includes star, tree and mesh topologies.
The star and tree networks are many-to-one networks that
one routing device forwards information from field
devices and other routers. In order to guarantee reliability,
industrial wireless control network also adopts mesh
topology in which field devices and routers have more than
one communicating paths to forward their data. The
multi-path of information forwarding in mesh network can
support reliable communications in case of interferences.
Industrial wireless control networks are divided into
several subnets. In each subnet, there is a central device
responsible for subnet organization and at least one
routing device for packet forwarding. Gateways forward
messages between the wireless field networks and high
level management and control networks (See Figure 2).
  The APL
High level managem ent High level m anagement High level management
network network network

Gateway Gateway Gateway

The APL integrates the functions of Application and
R R Transport Layer of OSI protocol model. It defines
D D ... D R D ... R
communication interfaces, services and connections to
D R D D R
(a) Star topology
D R D D R D
support message exchanging between multiple USL
R R R R
D objects for the distributed automatic applications.
R: Routing device D
D: field device
H: handheld device
D D
D
D
D Different applications require different communication
D

(b) tree topology

R H
services. Predefined periodic applications, such as
(c) mesh topology
measuring values of sensors need to be transmitted within
Fig.2 Network topologies of industrial wireless control
communication
their sampling cycle. Commands of controllers should be
delivered to actuators within their deadlines. Real-time
3.3 Communication Protocol alarms of production processes should also be passed to
Referring to ISO OSI model and wired fieldbus, the control system as soon as possible. Uploading and
protocol of industrial wireless control network includes downloading communication should be delivered between
the USL, APL, Network Layer (NWL), DLL and PHL devices reliably. Thus the APL should provide
(Figure 1). one-to-many predefined periodic publish/subscriber,
one-to-many non-predefined report/distribution and
 The USL
one-to-one non-predefined client/server communication
The USL is on the top of the protocol model. Industrial
services.
wireless control communication faces deterministic
The APL must also provide communication paths between
monitoring and control tasks of production processes.
automatic objects in different devices just like the
Standardized automatic task and device models can be
end-to-end services in the OSI Transport Layer. The APL
defined to convenience the configuration and management
establishes communicating connections and paths between
of the control systems. The USL adopts the object-oriented
automatic objects in different field devices according to
approach to encapsulate standard automatic tasks
the system configuration. When automation system runs,
including data (characteristics) and functionality (methods
the USL application objects can communicate with each
and internal state) for re-use and consistency. Thus the
other through predefined communication services
USL ensures an open and interoperable application
according to the communication relations and paths.
environment.
 The DLL
The USL includes device object and automatic task
objects. The standardized objects can be defined The DLL provides device-to-device message
according to IEC61499 and IEC61804 industrial function transmissions and allocates communication resource
block standard. Device object describes the properties of between competitive users to avoid collision, improve
wireless field device which include the information of the throughput and bandwidth utilization. The DLL must
device and automatic objects. It is used in device, network, provide real-time, reliable communication services to
system management and configuration. Automatic objects guarantee the requirements of the USL automatic
specify the standard automatic tasks in industrial applications and APL communication services. Thus,
monitoring and control applications, such as AI, AO, DI, predefined periodic and non-predefined real-time message
DO and PID that interact with the industrial processes. transmissions and channel accesses must be provided in
These automatic tasks implement collecting and the MAC sublayer of the DLL.
processing field data, such as temperature, pressure and Superframe is a widely used channel access method in
liquid level, computing outputs to actuators with these data wireless communication. To satisfy the requirements of
and alarming for field processes. Automatic applications predefined periodic automatic tasks, the MAC also adopts
are established by connecting objects in different devices. cycled superframes. The channel of industrial wireless
So, standard device describing and organizing techniques control communication is divided into successive
should be adopted for interoperability. During superframes which include beacon, active portion (AP)
configuration processes, the control system gets network, and inactive portion (IP). Predefined Communication
device and automatic object information. It connects and Period (PCP) can be allocated in the superframe, both in
configures automatic objects, such as AI in sensor to PID AP and IP, for predefined periodic applications (see
in controller and then to AO in actuator, to construct Figure 3). By this way, the communication cycle and
automatic applications and systems. predefined transmissions in each cycle can be guaranteed
The schedule of automatic applications comes from system in the DLL.
configuration. The configuration defines communication
macro cycle and the time that the automatic applications
perform and communicate. Then the predefined automatic
tasks can occur within their scheduled time periodically.

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 M A C sup erfram e
a c tiv e p o r tio n
beacon
PCP
Fig.3 MAC superframe of industrial wireless control
communication
CSMA channel access is used in AP and the channel is
divided into time slots with the same size. Timeslots are
the basic time units for message exchanging. The message
transmitting and receiving take place in time slots through
CSMA/CA. In order to provide real-time services for
automatic applications, the MAC sublayer provides
prioritized CSMA/CA. Messages with different priorities
access wireless channel with different time intervals. High
priority real-time messages access the channel with short
time interval (STI) and low priority messages with long
time interval (LTI). And messages with different priorities
contend the channel with different back-off windows when
the channel is busy, high priority with short. Thus high
priority real-time messages can access the channel priori
to low priority ones. Figure 4 shows the channel
contending processes of different priorities.
E arlie st tran sm ission fo r
h igh p riority
Sh ort bac koff w ind ow
LT I
S TI
slottim e   slottim e
Fig.4 Channel accesses of different priority messages
To avoid interferences from production field and other
superframes, frequency hopping is used in the DLL.
Different superframes adopt different frequency hopping
sequences. Time synchronization and message integrity
checking are also involved in the DLL.
The results of configuration schedule of the USL
automatic applications are mapped into the DLL. The
cross-layer mapping of the real-time requirements can
guarantee the real accessing to the wireless channel. The
communication processes can really happen according to
the requirements.
Predefined periodic automatic applications in the USL are
mapped into PCPs in the DLL. They access the channel at
deterministic time period and communicate periodically
with superframes (Figure 5). The non-predefined real-time
USL automatic applications are mapped into high priority
messages in the DLL. They access the channel prior to the
non-real-time ones. Non-real-time applications are
delivered through low priority slotted CSMA/CA. The
joining of field devices, managements, maintenances and
configuration of the network and system are implemented
in this way too. So, the communication requirements of the
USL applications are mapped into the DLL. Resources are
reserved for predefined periodic tasks, different priority
services are provided for non-predefined real-time
communications in the DLL. Acknowledging, Retrying,
frequency hopping and error correcting can guarantee the
reliability of messages under interferences. The message
error control and checking can guarantee the integrity.
S y s te m m a cr o c y c le
i n a c t iv e p o rt io n
p e rf o r m i n g s o f a u t o m a t i c o b j e c t s
beacon
C o m m u n ic atio n s o f a u to m a tic o b jec ts
M A C s u p e rf ra m e
a c t i v e p o rt i o n in a c tiv e p o r tio n
b e ac o n beacon
PCP
Fig.5 Mapping of system schedule into the DLL channel access
 The NWL
The main functions of the NWL include addressing,
networking and routing. The NWL provides network-wide
addressing of devices. It also establishes wireless subnets
and is responsible for device joining and leaving.
When packets are forwarded from one subnet to another,
their performance requirements must also be retained.
During system configuration, the communication
requirements of cross-subnet automatic applications are
mapped to routing devices between the subnets. PCPs are
reserved for the routing devices in destined subnet to
forward predefined communications. Real-time messages
L on g b acko ff are also mapped into high priority communications.
w ind ow
Routing devices forward predefined messages through
PCPs defined in the destined subnet and real-time
messages with high priority. Thus the shortest forwarding
slo ttim e
  delays are guaranteed. Figure 6 shows the schedule
mapping of predefined periodic automatic task when the
devices are in the same or different subnets.
Multi-path and multi-routing transmissions guarantee
communication reliability when there are continual
interferences and obstacles between devices.
S y s te m m a c ro c y c le
P r e d e f in e d a u to m a t ic a p p li c a ti o n
M A C s u p e rfra m e
P C P o f t h e a p p li c a t io n P C P o f t h e f o r w a r d i n g d e v ic e
a ) t h e d e s t i n e d d e v ic e i s i n t h e s a m e s u b n e t w i t h t h e s o u r c e d e v i c e
S y s te m m a c ro c y c le
P r e d e f in e d a u to m a t ic a p p li c a ti o n
S o u r c e s u b n e t M A C s u p e rfra m e
P C P o f t h e a p p li c a ti o n
D e s tin e d s u b n e t M A C s u p e rfr a m e
P C P o f t h e f o r w a r d i n g d e v ic e
b ) th e d e s ti n e d d e v i c e i s i n t h e d i f f e r e n t s u b n e t f r o m th e s o u r c e d e v ic e
Fig.6 Cross-subnet mapping of predefined communication
 The PHL
The primary tasks of the PHY are: coding bits into
physical signals and decoding signals into bits, conveying
those signals from one physical location to another,
specifying the radio frequency and transmission power. In
order to improve compatibility with other industrial
wireless technologies, the PHL adopts IEEE802.15.4
PHL specification. Because of the short packets of
industrial monitoring and control applications, 250kbps
data rate is enough for information transmissions.
 Security and management
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In addition to these key functions of protocol layers, there
are also security and management functions distributed in
each layer. System and network security and management
are fulfilled through the functions and services in each
layer. Error control and retry can be used in the layers too.
4 PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
4.1 Performance of Direct Communications
First, let’s see the simple case that wireless sensors,
actuators and controllers are in the same subnet, and they
communicate with each other directly without forwarding.
In this case, the communication delay just includes the
time of message processing, queuing and transmitting
between the devices. There is no message forwarding
process and latency.
 Predefined Periodic Automatic Applications
Suppose TSU is the time the source object begins to send a
message, TSD the beginning time of its DLL PCP, TSDP is
the message processing time of source device, TSDS is the
sending time of the DLL, TSDT is the message transmitting
time in wireless channel, TDDR is the message receiving
time of destined DLL and TDDP is the time destined device
processes the message and passes it to the USL object.
Then, the communication delay TP is:
T P = T SD − T SU + T SDP + T SDS + T SDT + T DDR + T DDP . (1)
Because the time of message processing, sending and
receiving in the device and transmitting along the channel
are related to CPU processing and network transmission
speeds which are deterministic. So the whole
communication delay TP is deterministic and very small.
The communication requirements of predefined periodic
automatic application can be guaranteed in the same
subnet.
 Non-predefined Real-time Automatic Applications
As for non-predefined real-time automatic applications,
the messages contend the wireless channel with short
intervals and backoff windows, thus they can get the
channel first. When the traffic in the network is light, the
real-time communication can be transmitted immediately.
Then the communication delay is (if not colliding with
PCPs):
T R = T SDP + T SDS + T SDT + T DDR + T DDP .
When the traffic is heavy and there are a great number of
real-time messages to be sent in the subnet, real-time
messages must be queued and contend to access the
channel with each other and the additional queuing delay
is produced. The queuing delays are relative to the number
of the real-time messages and are not deterministic.
Suppose there are N real-time messages in the network at
the same time. In the best case, the message is the first one
accessing the channel. So, the queuing delay is TSQ = 0. In
the worst case, the messages may be the last one getting
the channel. Then the additional queuing delay TSQ is
N −1
T SQ = ∑ (T
i =1
SDQi + T Slot ) . (3)
TSDQi is the queuing delay of ith message; TSlot is the time
slot of the superframe. Because non-predefined messages
are delivered in slotted CSMA/CA, each message sending
will occupy one time slot.
4.2 Performance of Forwarding Communications
When there are interferences or obstacles between
wireless field devices, the devices can not communicate
with each other directly. The transmitted information must
be forwarded by routing devices.
 Predefined Periodic Automatic Applications
For predefined periodic automatic applications, the
cross-subnet DLL PCPs in routers ensure the deterministic
of forwarding communications. If the forwarding device
and destined device are in the same subnet with the
sending device, a forwarding PCP is allocated in the same
superframe with original PCP. If the destined device is in
different subnet, a PCP must be allocated in the
superframe of destined subnet that involves routing and
destined devices. The arrangement of original and
forwarding PCPs must consider the system schedule and
the time sequence.
In this case, the communication delays of predefined
periodic automatic applications are (only two hops):
TFP = T FD − TSU + TFDR + TFDP + TFDS + T FDT + TDDR + TDDP (4)
TFD is the beginning time of the forwarding PCP in the
superframe of the same or destined subnet, TFDR is the
message receiving time of the forwarding device, TFDP is
the message processing time, TFDS is the message sending
delay of the forwarding device and TFDT is the transmitting
time.
Just like direct communication, the time of message
processing and transmitting are deterministic and short, so
the forwarding delay TFP is deterministic. The message
can be transmitted within one communication cycle.
 Non-predefined Real-time Automatic Applications
The messages of non-predefined real-time automatic
applications are forwarded with high priority. If the
forwarding and destined devices are in the same subnet
with source device, the forwarding device contends the
(2)
channel of the same subnet to forward the message. If the
destined device is not in the same subnet with source
device, the forwarding device receives the message and
then contends the channel of the destined subnet to
forward the message.
When the network traffic is light or in the best case, the
source and the forwarding device get the channel
immediately when they have real-time message to send.
Then the message queuing delay of one hop forwarding is
zero. The whole communication delay is:
TFR = TR + TFDR + TFDP + TFDS + TFDT . (5)
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In the worst case, the message is the last one to get the
channel and to be forwarded. If the destined device is in
the same subnet with source device, the communication
delay of the message is:
TFRS = TSQ + TSDS + TSDT + TFDR + TFDP + TFDS + TFDT . (6)
If the destined device is in different subnet and the number
of high priority real-time messages in the destined subnet
is M, the communication delay is:
M DLL, real-time packet routing in multi-path mesh
TFRF = TFRS + ∑(TDDQj+ TSlot) . (7)
j =1
TDDQi is the queuing delay of jth message in destined
subnet.
So, when non-predefined real-time messages are
forwarded, the routing devices must contend the channel to
transmit the messages. The additional delay is relative to
the number of real-time messages in the subnet and in the
destined subnet.
Then we can conclude that because of the real-time and
reliability mechanisms in the protocol and cross-layer,
cross-network schedule mapping, the predefined periodic
applications can communicate cyclically with bounded
delays and jitters, the non-predefined real-time
applications can be transmitted with the shortest latencies.
But when the traffic is heavy, the delays of non-predefined
automatic applications will be relative to the number of the
messages and are not deterministic. This can be controlled
by adjust the number of the field devices deployed in the
subnets.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The implementation of real-time and reliable industrial
wireless control network and protocol solves the key
problems when introducing wireless communication
technologies into industry factories. This will provide the
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required communication services for industrial automatic
monitoring and control applications and will support
wireless communication technologies to really step into
industry factories. Industry plants will share the fruit of
wireless communication technologies and gain huge
economical benefits.
But there are still some detailed problems to be solved in
the protocol, such as the implementations of PCPs in the
networks. Cross-layer and cross-network schedule
mapping also needs more effective methods. Except
qualitative analysis, the proposed protocol needs thorough
simulation and test to verify its availability. These are our
future research work.
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