A comprehensive DCF performance analysis in noisy industrial wireless networks

摘要

The use of wireless technology in industrial networks is becoming more popular because of its flexibility, reduction of cable cost, and deployment time. Providing an accurate model to study the most important parameters of these networks, the timeliness and reliability, is essential in assessing the network metrics and choosing proper protocol settings. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 is a common and established wireless technology, and several analytical models have been proposed to assess its performance; however, most of them are accurate only for a limited network situation, especially data networks that have large packet payloads and are used at high signal to noise ratios, and cannot be applied to study the performance of industrial networks that have short packet lengths and are used in harsh and noisy environments. In this paper, a novel three-dimensional discrete-time Markov chain model has been proposed for the IEEE 802.11-based industrial wireless networks using the distributed coordination function as the medium access control mechanism in the worst-case saturated traffic. It considers both causes of the backoff freezing: busy channel and the successive interframe space waiting time. In this way, it provides a much more accurate estimation of the channel access and error probabilities, resulting in a more accurate network parameter calculation. Also, based on the proposed model, a comprehensive packet delay analysis, including average, jitter, and cumulative distribution function, has been provided for the near 100% reliable industrial scenario and error-prone channel condition, which in comparison with similar pieces of work provides much more accurate results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.