Structuring Measurements for Modeling and the Deployment of Industrial Wireless Networks

The deployment of wireless networks in the industrial settings is hampered by the inability to predict the wireless link performance in the field. We present the methodology for extracting models and assessing the performance in the deployment that is based on the packet reception rate. The measurements taken with IEEE 802.15.4-compliant wireless networks extract the relationship between the device location and packet reception rate under different settings, such as output power level, packet size, asymmetry, channels, temporal, and antenna features. We then outline means to build usable models of wireless networks and to evaluate and tune the performance of deployed wireless networks.