WirelessHART network analyzer with coexistence detection

The use of wireless networks in industrial environment is growing due to the advantages of these networks compared to wired systems. The WirelessHART protocol was created in 2007, and it´s the first open wireless communication standard specifically designed for industrial environments. This protocol has been gaining increasing applicability in industry due to its high reliability and robustness. Because it is a recent protocol, there are still many ongoing researches. One of them is related to tools for analyzing and monitoring the network. Such tools have the main objective to capture the messages that travel on the network, acting as a sniffer. However, the WirelessHART protocol has some peculiarities as compared to other wireless networks, such as the use of 15 different channels. Because of this, many sniffers already proposed for wireless networks can not be applied, because its capture data on only one frequency. This paper proposes a new tool, which has advantages such as: data capture in 15 channels using only one radio receiver, local storage of captured data using a memory card and measuring the energy in the channels for getting information about interference in the network. In addition, an offline application presents statistics and analysis about the captured data. The results show that the tool is working properly as a sniffer and it´s performing the interference detection in the network. A case study shows the behavior of the WirelessHART network coexisting with IEEE 802.11 standard.