ReWINS: a distributed multi-RF sensor control network for industrial automation

Remote "Monitor and Control" systems are being increasingly used in various areas including security, transportation, manufacturing, supply chain, healthcare, biomedical, etc. A unit system with hardware and software components, sans network support, for providing limited monitoring and control for industrial automation was proposed in our earlier work. In this paper, we extend that architecture to address the issues faced by large-scale wireless industrial automation-networking, communication architecture, modularity, extendibility and fault tolerance. The RF link of the wireless interface is reconfigurable to accommodate different RF modules (Bluetooth, 802.11, Zig-bee, RFID) providing over-the-air (OTA) plug-n-play capability. The application integration platform maintains a component level description of the system and is interfaced to a spatio-temporal visualization tool, imparting flexibility for implementing complex systems, where nodes can be addressed individually or on a group/cluster basis. Experimental results of the reconfigurable wireless interface and simulation results of network organization and healing are presented.