A fuzzy based algorithm to manage power consumption in industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

The network management plays an important role in Wireless Sensor Networks WSNs, to control both the sleep and the wake times of the nodes to make data transmissions in an energy-efficient way, thus prolonging network lifetime. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach to control the uptime of the nodes of an Industrial WSN using a fuzzy based algorithm. In a scenario of process control is not possible to separate power energy management from the need to ensure respect for real-time constraints imposed by the application such as deadline miss values of periodic traffic flows. The mechanism here described takes into account the timing requirements of the soft real-time application and, at the same time, minimizes energy consumption. Therefore the aim of this paper is to show how, using a fuzzy logic controller, implemented in an industrial WSN, it is possible increasing the life cycle of the batteries of the individual wireless nodes and by exerting continuous control on energy consumption of individual nodes and on network performance, by adapting in a dynamic way the sampling period of traffic flows of the WSN. To show the effectiveness of our approach, we also evaluated its performance in True-Time.