Weight-based link scheduling for convergecast in WirelessHART network

WirelessHART is considered to be one of the most promising wireless network protocols for its high robustness comparing to other similar wireless networks. Convergecast is an efficient approach for industrial control. But in WirelessHART specifications, no scheduling algorithms are defined for convergecast. In this paper, an efficient link arrangement strategy for packet delivering named WBLSS (Weight-Based Link Scheduling Strategy) is proposed. In order to improve the communication reliability and assign time slots to nodes in the network evenly,WBLSS considers network topology for time slot assignment.Nodes withmore children in the communication tree havemore time slots for communication, which improves the global throughput dramatically.As compared to the existing link arrangement strategy inWirelessHART, both the throughput of the network and the real-time performance are improved in WBLSS.

Duke Scholars

Author Xin Li Electrical and Computer Engineering