A ZigBee-based industrial WLAN

This paper evaluates the performance of an industrial Wireless Networked Control System (WNCS). The proposed WNCS utilizes the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol (which ZigBee is based on) without modifications as an alternative that is low cost and low power compared to other wireless technologies. OMNeT++ simulations are used to measure the end-to-end delay and packet loss from the sensors to the controller and from the controller to the actuators. It is demonstrated that the measured delay, including all types of transmission, encapsulation, de-capsulation, queuing and propagation, meet real-time control network requirements while guaranteeing correct packet reception with no packet loss. Moreover, the interference tolerance of the proposed WNCS was quantified. All results presented in this study were based on a 95% confidence analysis.