WTB: A token based wireless communication over 802.11b

Application of wireless technologies in Industrial communication claims for timely data delivery, since many applications are based on processes with real-time constraints. Currently, the 802.11B is the most used wireless protocol in the industrial applications area but it is not the ideal solution owing to the contention for medium access which can cause unbounded delays. In this paper the authors discuss the use of a token based approach as a possible solution and present the WTB protocol which is a middleware located over the 802.11B protocol. The analysis and the measurements performed on a real testbed have shown the potentiality of this approach which is able to support both the real-time and non real-time traffic still maintaining the delay within suitable bounds.