Building Industrial Communication Systems based on IEEE 802.11g wireless technology

Abstract

Industrial communication systems (ICS) are specifically designed for deterministic communication between sensors, actuators, programmable logic controllers, monitoring systems, and operator workstations. These networks are traditionally based on wired technology and a deterministic medium access control. Nowadays, the emerging trend is the availability of wireless technology for ICS, since this leads to more flexible and mobile equipments at reduced cost. This article presents a performance analysis of wireless ICS based on the IEEE 802.11g standardized technology, considering the infrastructure mode with both distributed and point coordination functions. The time-critical messages are handled during the contention free period. The performance analysis allows to validate the ability of 802.11g technology to support time-critical traffic required by wireless ICS, being given the scheduling and characteristics of the messages. In addition, the configuration parameters of access points can be easily derived from the performance analysis