Industrial Wireless End-to-End Measurements and Impacts in a Gas-Sensing Scenario

Abstract

Industrial wireless is a potential networking solution in many scenarios due to its flexibility and ease of communications in harsh environments. Industrial wireless in gas-sensing and air-quality monitoring applications is essential when wired communications cannot perform the task safely and effectively. A major example of such environments is confined spaces where attaching mobile gas sensors with wires is a major concern for safety and cannot be deployed in some cases. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), we developed an end-to-end characterization method for industrial wireless networks. We employed this characterization method to study the end-to-end error and delay performance for a confined-space gas-sensing scenario. We have built the scenario using the NIST industrial wireless test bed, which includes ISA100.11a wireless devices, a channel emulator, and a high-performance programmable logic controller (PLC), where the physical process is simulated. In this work, we studied the effects of the size of the confined space, the relaying, input signal rate, and the impact of the existing workers in the confined space.