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Effects of wireless packet loss in industrial process control systems
Yongkang Liu1, Richard Candell1, Nader Moayeri1
1National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA.
Wireless networking in industrial control is viable for normal operations, but packet loss during disturbances requires enhanced protection. Redundant bandwidth, retransmission scheduling, and multipath routing improve wireless control performance in harsh environments.
Area of Science:
- Control Engineering
- Wireless Communication Systems
- Industrial Automation
Background:
- Networked control systems rely on precise sensing, actuation, and reliable communication links.
- Wireless networking offers deployment flexibility but faces challenges due to unreliable links in industrial settings.
- Existing models lack comprehensive evaluation of wireless communication imperfections on control performance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of wireless link quality on control performance using the Tennessee Eastman (TE) Challenge Model.
- To compare the performance of decentralized controllers with wireless versus wired communication links.
- To analyze the sensitivity of control performance to different packet loss models (IID and Gilbert-Elliot).
Main Methods:
- Utilized the Tennessee Eastman (TE) Challenge Model with a decentralized control system (41 sensors, 12 actuators).
- Simulated wireless links using Independent and Identically Distributed (IID) and Gilbert-Elliot (GE) packet loss models.
- Compared wireless link performance against wired links (100% reliable) under normal and disturbed operational conditions.
Main Results:
- Wireless links with redundant bandwidth reservation meet TE process model requirements under normal conditions.
- Wireless packet loss significantly impacts control performance during process stage transitions, especially under disturbances.
- The Gilbert-Elliot model highlights the controller's sensitivity to bursty packet losses in impaired wireless links.
Conclusions:
- Wireless networking is feasible for industrial process control, provided link quality is managed, especially during disturbances.
- Enhanced techniques like retransmission scheduling, multipath routing, and improved physical layer design are crucial for robust wireless control.
- Further research into industrial wireless protocols is needed to ensure reliability in challenging environments.
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