LAN-ND, a new neighbour discovery protocol for mobile WirelessHART industrial networks

Wireless industrial communications are expected to represent an essential component of the Factories of the Future. Current industrial wireless standards have been designed for networks with fixed devices, while future systems might require the mobility of certain devices within a factory. The neighbour discovery mechanism is an important feature of wireless standards for facilitating the mobility of devices. WirelessHART includes a contention-based neighbour discovery mechanism that is not particularly suited for efficiently discovering mobile devices. In this context, this paper proposes a new protocol, called Listen Advertise Network Neighbour Discovery (LAN-ND) that improves the neighbours´ detection probability of WirelessHART, and reduces the average time needed to detect new neighbour devices.