First evaluations of a simulation architecture of the use of a IEEE 802.11 WLAN in industrial context

Today, the choice of a WLAN for industrial time-critical applications remains a risky strategy. The available medium access method version being DCF, sharing the medium is not always suitable for data traffic for industrial applications such as periodic exchanges. As the PCF version is almost never implemented in WLAN drivers, we propose a simulation architecture to evaluate a PCF emulation driven by the 802.11 network access points. The chosen approach is based on a platform able to simulate the position of mobile communicating entities, spread over at least two neighboring cells. This simulation part, played by several PCs, uses a real WLAN to communicate. With such a tool, we made evaluations to observe how data frames can be broadcast within a cell and the consequences of an application traffic added in the cell from an application server.