Reliability and Temporality Optimization for Multiple Coexisting WirelessHART Networks in Industrial Environments

Abstract

Abstract-WirelessHART is a networking technology that is widely used in industrial wireless sensor networks. Its reliability and real-time performance are essential to industrial production. Many works have studied these two aspects, primarily focusing on a single WirelessHART network. However, multiple WirelessHART networks usually coexist in a real industrial environment. Applying existing approaches to such coexisting networks would cause performance degradation due to communication interference among these networks. In this paper, we propose a holistic framework that optimizes both reliability and temporality for multiple coexisting networks. The framework consists of two levels. The upper level targets communication channel management, and the lower level addresses data flow scheduling. For the upper level, we propose a network isolation algorithm that improves the data transmission reliability through dynamically adjusting channel assignments to different WirelessHART networks. For the lower level, we propose data flow scheduling algorithms that guarantee the temporality of data flows within each isolated network. These algorithms minimize the number of channels reserved by each isolated network and further enhance the transmission reliability through alleviating channel resource contention. We conduct trace-driven simulations of the channel management algorithm, and the results demonstrate that our algorithm exhibits stable performance and reduces packet loss by 36%. For the scheduling algorithms, the simulations demonstrate that in contrast with existing algorithms, the greater the number of coexisting networks, the fewer resources our algorithms use. When eight networks coexist, our algorithms outperform existing ones by consuming up to 63% fewer channel resources.

Data Management in Industry 4.0: State of the Art and Open Challenges

“…Due to the fact that production scheduling is optimized using objective functions based on punctuality criteria such as earliness and tardiness [117], significant part of those computations are taking place at the edge of the IIoT deployments, transforming edge computing in a fundamental type of computation, with contributions ranging from adaptive transmission optimization [109] to multiple gateway optimization [110]. Additionally, different IIoT deployments usually incorporate different communication and networking alternatives, such as WIrelessHART [105], RPL [126] and 6TiSCH [106], as well as frequent protocol conversions [103], operations which have to seamlessly exchange data with each other. Consequently IIoT and ICPS technologies enable intelligent, adaptive control with seamless vertical, horizontal and dynamic data exchange between heterogeneous platforms and networks, through an exhaustive use of data exchange, coordination and collaboration [119], as well as through recently proposed techniques like network slicing [114].…”

Real-Time Scheduling for Event-Triggered and Time-Triggered Flows in Industrial Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks

“…The work in [7] proves that the scheduling problem of WSANs is NP-hard, and then derives a strong necessary condition for schedulability. After that, to improve the realtime performance of WSANs, many centralized scheduling algorithms are proposed, such as assigning fixed priorities [8], [9], assigning segmented slots [10], eliminating bottleneck [11], and addressing spatial re-use [12]. However, these centralized algorithms assign communication resources only to time-triggered packets.…”

Path Collision-aware Real-time Link Scheduling for TSCH Wireless Networks

“…The study in [10] proposes a centralized scheduling algorithm for a generalized WirelessHART network model, where nodes generate flows of packets at different rates. The authors prioritize each packet, based on rate monotonic strategy that assigns higher priority to packets with short generation rates.…”