Reliable real-time routing protocol for industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks

The control applications of Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (IWSANs) are subject to strict requirements in terms of reliability and end-to-end delay. Transmission failures or deadline misses may seriously degrade the quality of control. In this paper, we propose a reliable real-time routing protocol in IWSANs for industrial control purpose. Node weight values and related node lists are utilized to provide directional information. Packet forwarding is based on a controlled flooding mechanism with several forwarding criteria. Performance evaluations via simulations show that significant improvements of reliability, real-time performance, network recovery time, and resource utilization efficiency can be achieved by our proposed routing protocol, compared with traditional routing protocols.