Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks: Channel Modeling and Performance Evaluation

Abstract

(provisional) A complete dynamic wideband channel model for industrial wireless sensor network (WSN) is presented. The model takes into account the noise, interferences, strong vibrations and heavy multipath propagation effects present in harsh industrial environments. The noise is modeled as first-order two state Markov process describing the typical bursty nature of the impulsive noise usually present in industrial environments. The interference effects are modeled as multiple narrowband signals operating on the same frequency band as the desired signal. The multipath propagation is described by assuming the scatterers to be uniformly distributed in space within an elliptical region where the transmitting and receiving nodes are located at the foci of the ellipse. A single degree of freedom vibration model is used to describe the signal path-length variations caused by vibrating scatterers. Furthermore, performance evaluations of IEEE 802.15.4 in terms of bit-error-rate (BER) using the developed channel model are presented. The results show that in addition to spread spectrum techniques, link diversity can further improve the link quality in harsh industrial environments.