Tool and Method for Obtaining End-to-End Reliability Parameters of Wireless Industrial Networks
Abstract
Wireless communication systems have been increasingly employed in the industry. In this context, the WirelessHART and ISA 100.11a protocols are being used due today due to the pioneering and high robustness. This work has as general objective to study the end-to-end latency of communications in wireless industrial networks. For this purpose, a tool for communication with the network gateway, with ability to extract information from the field devices and the gateway itself, is developed and used in case studies. The case studies contemplate methods to evaluate the quality of service of the network, by observing the end-to-end latency, in diverse failure situations. The faults are injected into the network and monitored by the developed tool itself. Using WirelessHART as a case study, aiming the evaluation of the applicability of these networks in the industrial processes control. The results show that the tool is capable of analyzing and obtaining the latency data of the network in a concrete manner, and its use is adequate for the most diverse studies on wireless industrial network communication.