Integrating wireless Sensor Network with Networked Control Systems

The integration of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) into industrial networked monitoring and control systems has become an essential factor to effectively regulate and manage industrial automation operations. The automation of monitoring and control systems is an important function for many utility companies such as oil/gas and electricity companies in order to reduce operating cost and to increase efficiency. There are many issues that have to be dealt with concerning the integration of WSNs into such systems and these issues have to be addressed in an application-specific manner. One of the most widely used control systems in industrial control automation is the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, and with the aim of improving productivity of monitored sites (e.g., oil/gas well and pipelines) at minimal costs, it is very significant to enable the interoperability of SCADA systems with new technologies such as WSNs and extensibility of future SCADA systems for new applications. Furthermore, a new approach of in-network processing system is essential to successfully monitor, detect, identify, and localize anomalies such as blockage and leakage. This new approach should consider the benefits of low cost, flexible deployment, continuous monitoring, and accurate problem detection, identification, and localization quickly, reliably, and accurately, thereby improving the current SCADA system