Towards Predictable and Reliable Wireless Communication in Harsh Environments

Abstract: Wireless communication in industrial, scientific and medical applications have several benefits. The main benefits when using wireless technologies include ease-of-deployment, the simplicity to introduce new units into the network and mobility. However it also put higher demands on the communication, including reliability and predictability compared to wired communication. The reliability issues correlate to the radio communication and the possibility to ensure that the user data is received, and within the time frame of the system requirements. This doctoral thesis presents an empirical measurement approach to investigate and model the behaviour linked to reliability and predictability. The focus of the work presented is energy consumption, packet-error-rate and latency studies. This is performed for various radio technologies and standards in (radio?) harsh environments. The main contributions of this thesis are the measurements platforms and procedures that have been developed to meet the requirements to investigate modern radio technologies in terms of predictability and reliability. This thesis show that it is possible to predict wireless communication in radio harsh environments. However it is necessary to determine the characteristics of the environment to be able to choose a suitable radio technology. The measurement procedures presented in this thesis alongside the platform developed enable these types of investigations. In this thesis a model of the energy consumption for a Bluetooth radio in low-duty-cycle applications with point-to-multipoint communication is presented. The measurements show that distance and transmission power will not effect the energy consumption for a Bluetooth nor ZigBee module. However the packet-error-rate and number of retransmissions will affect the overall energy consumption, and these parameters can be correlated to distance and foremost the environmental characteristics. This thesis also presents two application-based solutions, a time synchronized ECG network with reliable data communication as well as a low-latency wireless I/O for a hydro plant.