Evaluation of cognitive radio for mission-critical and time-critical WSAN in industrial environments under interference

The evaluation of Cognitive Radio (CR) for Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs) in industrial wireless automation applications is presented in this contribution. Current wireless solutions do not ensure enough performance for hard real-time and reliability requirements, based on time-critical data traffic. These industrial applications are characterized by harsh environments, where the robustness of wireless communications plays an important role. In these kinds of environments, CR can increase the system´s reliability and robustness. Thus, several cognitive and non-cognitive MACs which ensure mission-critical and time-critical data transmission have been evaluated through OPNET network simulator over several fading and interference channels. The provided results show that CR-based MACs are able to maintain the performance of the network in harsh channels and under interference.