A Method for Dynamically Selecting the Best Frequency Hopping Technique in Industrial Wireless Sensor Network Applications

Abstract

Industrial wireless applications often share the communication channel with other wireless technologies and communication protocols. This coexistence produces interferences and transmission errors which require appropriate mechanisms to manage retransmissions. Nevertheless, these mechanisms increase the network latency and overhead due to the retransmissions. Thus, the loss of data packets and the measures to handle them produce an undesirable drop in the QoS and hinder the overall robustness and energy efficiency of the network. Interference avoidance mechanisms, such as frequency hopping techniques, reduce the need for retransmissions due to interferences but they are often tailored to specific scenarios and are not easily adapted to other use cases. On the other hand, the total absence of interference avoidance mechanisms introduces a security risk because the communication channel may be intentionally attacked and interfered with to hinder or totally block it. In this paper we propose a method for supporting the design of communication solutions under dynamic channel interference conditions and we implement dynamic management policies for frequency hopping technique and channel selection at runtime. The method considers several standard frequency hopping techniques and quality metrics, and the quality and status of the available frequency channels to propose the best combined solution to minimize the side effects of interferences. A simulation tool has been developed and used in this work to validate the method.

Development of a method of increasing the interference immunity of frequency-hopping spread spectrum radio communication devices

“…In the article [4] a method of dynamic selection of workers for industrial FHSS RCD is proposed. The essence of the proposed method is to evaluate the available frequency range by several standard indicators (probability of bit error and signal/noise ratio) and the selection of the best frequency subchannels for operation.…”

“…However, the scientific results presented in the known publications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] have a number of shortcomings, namely:…”

“…In addition, the type and characteristics of intentional interference affecting the receiver input (noise, multi-tone interference or interference in response) are determined for a particular radio device. 4. Selection of the signal parameters.…”

“…In the absence of retransmitted interference, the FHSS operation mode is chosen for the control of partial band noise interference and noise interference, namely, the coefficient K ch varies depending on the signal/noise ratio according to the step-by-step law with the predefined gradation (stage 12,16,17). 4. Correction code selection.…”

“…One type of spectrum expansion used in modern RCD is the frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) method [1][2][3][4].…”