WRTMAC: A MAC Proposal for 802.11 Networks in Factory Automation

FRIEDRICH GUILLERMO; ALIMENTI, OMAR; REGGIANI, GUILLERMO

Bilbao

Conferencia; 15th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation; 2010

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Wireless communication is an attractive alternative for the industry automation and related areas, due to the increased mobility coupled with a reduction of cabling costs and deployment time. However several relevant parameters exists which might influence the timely and error behaviour of industrial wireless communication systems. IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks have become more and more popular due to low cost and easy deployment, providing best effort services but do not have quality of service. The 802.11e standard provides two alternatives for medium access (EDCA and HCCA) by differentiating traffic into four Access Categories (ACs). This paper proposes a mechanism for controlling the medium access, so-called Wireless Real Time Medium Access Control (WRTMAC), developed from the EDCA scheme of standard 802.11e. The handling of the Arbitration Inter-Frame Space (AIFS) has been modified and replaced by the Real-Time Inter-Frame Space (RIFS) in order to make the medium access deterministic even in terms of high traffic.