Time-Critical Wireless Networked Embedded Systems: Feasibility and Experimental Assessment
Francesco Branz, Riccardo Antonello, Luca Schenato, Federico Tramarin, Stefano Vitturi · IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics · 2020
In this article, we investigate an innovative solution, to implement high sampling frequency industrial control by means of networked embedded systems connected via WiFi. The basic idea relies on a co-design approach for the control application, which is then able to adapt its sampling period, as well as to tune the Wi-Fi parameters, according to the feedback coming from the network. To this end, we implemented a cross-layer architecture acting at both application and data-link layers, which features a robust frame-delay state estimator, a time-efficient communication policy, and a specific tuning of the critical protocol parameters. Suitable hardware-in-the-loop experiments have been carried out exploiting two different embedded systems available off-the-shelf. The preliminary results, obtained from an extensive experimental campaign, are encouraging since they show that the proposed architecture enables industrial control applications requiring a sampling rate up to 1000 Hz, even in presence of communication impairments.