Configuration and operation of networked control systems over heterogeneous WSANs

There have been both research and commercial advances on applying Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSN) in industrial premises. These have cost advantages related to avoiding some cabled deployments. A possible architecture involves a Networked Control System (NCS) with many small WSN subnetworks, cabled nodes and computer servers (e.g., servers, control stations). In those systems individual sensor nodes can be programmed, as opposed to cabled analog systems. We investigate approaches for networked-wide configuration, where all nodes—cabled or WSN sensors—can be configured with simplicity from a single interface, instead of hand-coding or complex configurations of individual nodes. We propose an architecture and approach for configuration and operation. Previous related proposals on middleware involving WSNs suffer from two major limitations: they either program within an individual WSN or configure operation outside WSNs, wrapping data coming from WSN. They do not allow configuring WSN and non-WSN nodes for operation from a single interface. We discuss the architecture and propose the NCSWSN configuration and operation approach. We are applying this system in an industrial testbed, therefore we test the approach and also show user interfaces and results from the deployment.