Engineering Hybrid Wired/Wireless Fieldbus Networks- a case study

Advances in networking and information technologies are transforming factory-floor communication systems into a mainstream activity within industrial automation. It is now recognized that future industrial computer systems will be intimately tied to real-time computing and to communication technologies. For this vision to succeed, complex heterogeneous factory-floor communication networks (including mobile/wireless components) need to function in a predictable, flawless, efficient and interoperable way. In this paper we re-visit the issue of supporting real-time communications in hybrid wired/wireless fieldbus-based networks, bringing into it some experimental results obtained in the framework of the RFieldbus ISEP pilot [5]. 1. A hybrid wired/wireless fieldbus 1.1 Basics on a hybrid wired/wireless architecture A traditional fieldbus network consists of several nodes physically connected through a wired bus. Therefore, and due to market penetration, thinking about wireless means considering hybrid wired/wireless solutions able to inter-operate with legacy (wired) systems. We assume hybrid wired/wireless network topologies such as the one depicted in Figure 1, where PROFIBUS is considered as the federating system [1]