Reliable communication framework for time-critical wireless industrial control networks

Industrial control network is considered as a system of several interconnecting devices that can control and monitor the industrial environments. Most control networks are widely used in industries with high degree of automation where the need of real of hard real time data accuracy is highly critical for high yield and machine uptime. The control packets transmitted over these control networks consists of hard real time data that is characterized as time-critical. Considering the hard real-time data accuracy and time-criticality, this paper proposes a framework to support reliable and timely transmission of control packets over industrial control networks. This framework is built on two approaches: control panel method and adaptive HARQ method. The control panel method is based on wireless token passing approach called timed token protocol that is widely used for hard real time traffic. The adaptive HARQ is developed to guarantee delivery of control packets accurately before the deadline. A combination of mathematical analysis and simulation studies are used in this paper to show the effectiveness of the proposed framework in providing reliable communication of time-critical control data.