Internal model control for industrial wireless plant using WirelessHART hardware-in-the-loop simulator

Area of Science:

• Industrial Automation
• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Control Systems Engineering

Background:

• WirelessHART and ISA100 Wireless are emerging for industrial process plants.
• Current wireless control applications are limited to monitoring due to confidence issues.
• Traditional PID control is inadequate for wireless environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate Internal Model Control (IMC) for WirelessHART systems.
• Address limitations of PID control in wireless process environments.
• Enhance robustness and performance of wireless control.

Main Methods:

• Control design using the Internal Model Control (IMC) approach.
• Focus on wireless process applications.
• Utilized real-time WirelessHART hardware-in-the-loop simulator (WH-HILS) for testing.

Main Results:

• IMC approach shows improved robustness to network delay variations.
• Outperforms traditional PID control in wireless environments.
• Validated through simulation and experimental results.

Conclusions:

• IMC is a viable and robust control strategy for WirelessHART.
• The proposed IMC method enhances reliability in dynamic wireless networks.
• Further research into IMC for wireless control is warranted.