Search Results (6)

The industrial control and automation sector has invested in the development and standardization of new wireless (WirelessHART, ISA 100.11a, and WIA-PA) and wired (Profibus/Profinet, Modbus, and LonWORK) solutions aimed at automating processes to support standard monitoring and control functions from the perspective of addressing critical applications, as well as those integrated within the Building Internet of Things (BIoT) concept. Distributed data acquisition and control systems allow modern installations to monitor and control devices remotely. Various network protocols have been proposed to specify communication formats between a client/gateway and server devices, with Modbus being an example that has been widely implemented in the latest industrial electrical installations. The main contribution made in this paper concerns the completion of the Modbus Extension (ModbusE) specifications for the server station in the classical Modbus communication architecture, as well as their implementation and testing in an STM32F4 kit. A general-purpose control architecture is proposed for BIoT sector, comprising both intelligent touch switches and communication protocols of which the Modbus protocol is used extensively for the monitoring and control part, especially between clients, smart switches, and devices. The specific contributions concern the presentation of a scientific and practical implementation of improved specifications and their integration as software modules on ModbusE protocol server stations. A client station with a VirtualComm USB PC connection is also implemented in the lab to test the operation of the proposed server with specific Modbus applications. Full article

In the Industry 4.0 era, with the continuous integration of industrial field systems and upper-layer facilities, interconnection between industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) and industrial Internet networks is becoming increasingly pivotal. However, when deployed in real industrial scenarios, IWSNs are often connected to legacy control systems, through some wired industrial network protocols via gateways. Complex protocol translation is required in these gateways, and semantic interoperability is lacking between IWSNs and the industrial Internet. To fill this gap, our study focuses on realizing the interconnection and interoperability between an IWSN and the industrial Internet. The Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) and joint publish/subscribe (pub/sub) communication between the two networks are used to achieve efficient transmission. Taking the Wireless Networks for Industrial Automation Process Automation (WIA-PA), a typical technology in IWSNs, as an example, we develop a communication architecture that adopts OPC UA as a communication bridge to integrate the WIA-PA network into the industrial Internet. A WIA-PA virtualization method for OPC UA pub/sub data sources is designed to solve the data mapping problem between WIA-PA and OPC UA. Then, the WIA-PA/OPC UA joint pub/sub transmission mechanism and the corresponding configuration mechanism are designed. Finally, a laboratory-level verification system is implemented to validate the proposed architecture, and the experimental results demonstrate its promising feasibility and capability. Full article

Industrialization has led to a huge demand for a network control system to monitor and control multi-loop processes with high effectiveness. Due to these advancements, new industrial wireless sensor network (IWSN) standards such as ZigBee, WirelessHART, ISA 100.11a wireless, and Wireless network for Industrial Automation-Process Automation (WIA-PA) have begun to emerge based on their wired conventional structure with additional developments. This advancement improved flexibility, scalability, needed fewer cables, reduced the network installation and commissioning time, increased productivity, and reduced maintenance costs compared to wired networks. On the other hand, using IWSNs for process control comes with the critical challenge of handling stochastic network delays, packet drop, and external noises which are capable of degrading the controller performance. Thus, this paper presents a detailed study focusing only on the adoption of WirelessHART in simulations and real-time applications for industrial process monitoring and control with its crucial challenges and design requirements. Full article

Dependability and standardization are essential to the adoption of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in industrial applications. Standards such as ZigBee, WirelessHART, ISA100.11a and WIA-PA are, nowadays, at the basis of the main process-automation technologies. However, despite the success of these standards, management of WSNs is still an open topic, which clearly is an obstacle to dependability. Existing diagnostic tools are mostly application- or problem-specific, and do not support standard-based multi-network monitoring. This paper proposes a WSN monitoring architecture for process-automation technologies that addresses the mentioned limitations. Specifically, the architecture has low impact on sensor node resources, uses network metrics already available in industrial standards, and takes advantage of widely used management standards to share the monitoring information. The proposed architecture was validated through prototyping, and the obtained performance results are presented and discussed in the final part of the paper. In addition to proposing a monitoring architecture, the paper provides an in-depth insight into metrics, techniques, management protocols, and standards applicable to industrial WSNs. Full article

Wireless communication is a trend nowadays for the industrial environment. A number of different technologies have emerged as solutions satisfying strict industrial requirements (e.g., WirelessHART, ISA100.11a, WIA-PA). As the industrial environment presents a vast range of applications, adopting an adequate solution for each case is vital to obtain good performance of the system. In this context, the routing and scheduling schemes associated with these technologies have a direct impact on important features, like latency and energy consumption. This situation has led to the development of a vast number of routing and scheduling schemes. In the present paper, we focus on the WirelessHART technology, emphasizing its most important routing and scheduling aspects in order to guide both end users and the developers of new algorithms. Furthermore, we provide a detailed literature review of the newest routing and scheduling techniques forWirelessHART, discussing each of their features. These routing algorithms have been evaluated in terms of their objectives, metrics, the usage of theWirelessHART structures and validation method. In addition, the scheduling algorithms were also evaluated by metrics, validation, objectives and, in addition, by multiple superframe support, as well as by the redundancy method used. Moreover, this paper briefly presents some insights into the main WirelessHART simulation modules available, in order to provide viable test platforms for the routing and scheduling algorithms. Finally, some open issues in WirelessHART routing and scheduling algorithms are discussed. Full article

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks. Full article