Medium access control and routing in industrial wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) appear as a promising solution for industrial applications, especially for monitoring purposes, due to the advantages that they provide [19]. First of all, they overcome the wiring constraints present in wired industrial monitoring and control systems. Other advantages can be listed as ease of installation and maintenance, reduced cost, and better performance [50]. On the other hand, lack of standardization, strict real-timeliness, and reliability requirements of some industrial applications have limited their use in industrial domains [6]. Today, however, initial examples of industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) do appear especially on process monitoring and control [28, 19], supported with standardization efforts such as IEEE 802.15.4 [2], WirelessHART [40], and ISA100.11a [25].