Reliability and Availability Evaluation of Wireless Sensor Networks for Industrial Applications

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) currently represent the best candidate to be adopted as the communication solution for the last mile connection in process control and monitoring applications in industrial environments. Most of these applications have stringent dependability (reliability and availability) requirements, as a system failure may result in economic losses, put people in danger or lead to environmental damages. Among the different type of faults that can lead to a system failure, permanent faults on network devices have a major impact. They can hamper communications over long periods of time and consequently disturb, or even disable, control algorithms. The lack of a structured approach enabling the evaluation of permanent faults, prevents system designers to optimize decisions that minimize these occurrences. In this work we propose a methodology based on an automatic generation of a fault tree to evaluate the reliability and availability of Wireless Sensor Networks, when permanent faults occur on network devices. The proposal supports any topology, different levels of redundancy, network reconfigurations, criticality of devices and arbitrary failure conditions. The proposed methodology is particularly suitable for the design and validation of Wireless Sensor Networks when trying to optimize its reliability and availability requirements.

Ultra-Reliable Link Adaptation for Downlink MISO Transmission in 5G Cellular Networks

“…The problem formulation, proposed methods and algorithms are often network specific. In particular, reliable routing and data delivery protocols have been studied quite extensively for mobile ad hoc networks [9], and wireless sensor networks [10].…”

A Survey of ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network Technology: Topology, Applications and Challenges

“…Topology may also affect the correctness and accuracy of sensor readings, ease of network implementation and network security [19]. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate these topologies and their corresponding trade-offs, while also looking at the various applications of the technology and the challenges facing the technology causing some constraints and limitations in its applications.…”

“…It also deals with transmission and reception of information from sources. The physical layer frequency band consists of 27 channels which are used worldwide [19]. How the bands are shared is shown in table 2. i. ZigBee MAC layer This layer access the network using CSMA/CA (carriersense multiple access with collision avoidance) to enable beacon transmission for synchronization and hence provide reliable transmission.…”

A Survey on Modeling and Enhancing Reliability of Wireless Sensor Network

“…A three-level hierarchical model for the reliability analysis of a sensor network is given in [34] as top model for the sensor network, the middle level model for sensor node are the fault tree and the bottom level models are Markov chains for individual sensor node components such as the power, sensor, ADC, microcontroller, external memory), tiny OS and channel model. The work in [35] focus on the approach called as sum of disjoint products (SDP) efficiently in fault trees consists of repeated events and it is easily automated in sensor network. The expressive power of the fault tree can be expanded by defining some dynamic gates for describing the modular imperfect coverage behaviour and common-cause failure behaviour of WSN [36].…”