Realization of timed reliable communication over off-the-shelf wireless technologies

Industrial and safety-critical applications pose strict requirements for timeliness and reliability for the communication solution. Thereby the use of off-the-shelf (OTS) wireless communication technologies can be attractive to achieve low cost and easy deployment. This paper presents and analyses a protocol and its analytical model, enabling to configure for explicit timeliness and message reliability requirements under different link technologies and conditions. We assess the timing behavior and reliability properties studying a scenario of distributing safety-critical alerts. Our evaluation covers selfdeployed networks based on 868 MHz XBee communication and EDGE/UMTS cellular infrastructure networks. Link measurements are conducted using OTS components. The experimental tests show good results for the considered long-range practical scenarios, supporting our approach of using an analytical model and link measurements to contribute to a (self-)configurable timed reliable protocol deployed on multiple technologies.