Hierarchical configuration system for wireless mesh networks in manufacturing industry

Wireless mesh networks (WMN) are a lowcost technology that can be easily deployed in factories without costly production breaks. This makes them an excellent networking technology for M2M applications, but so far, their penetration in industries was marginal. Our interviews with M2M and WMN users in manufacturing industry attribute this adoption failure to absence of operational support, in particular to lack of network configuration and management tools. To tackle this issue, we develop a highly-automated solution for WMN configuration and management. It is built upon established standards and software tools, but we have carefully tailored it to allow its operation in WMNs in harsh industrial environment, particularly to deal with considerable packet losses. High level of automation in our tool reduces the workload of network administrators, thus reducing the operational costs of such a network. The configuration system was implemented and deployed in a WMN in a large machining factory where we performed an experimental evaluation of reliability and performance of our configuration software.