Ferramenta para avaliação e inferência de parâmetros de redes industriais sem fio

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have gained ground in the industrial environment, due to the possibility of connecting points of information that were inaccessible to wired networks. However, there are several challenges in the implementation and acceptance of this technology in the industrial environment, one of them the guaranteed availability of information, which can be influenced by various parameters, such as path stability and power consumption of the field device. As such, in this work was developed a tool to evaluate and infer parameters of wireless industrial networks based on the WirelessHART and ISA 100.11a protocols. The tool allows quantitative evaluation, qualitative evaluation and evaluation by inference during a given time of the operating network. The quantitative and qualitative evaluation are based on own definitions of parameters, such as the parameter of stability, or based on descriptive statistics, such as mean, standard deviation and box plots. In the evaluation by inference uses the intelligent technique artificial neural networks to infer some network parameters such as battery life. Finally, it displays the results of use the tool in different scenarios networks, as topologies star and mesh, in order to attest to the importance of tool in evaluation of the behavior of these networks, but also support possible changes or maintenance of the system.