Challenges for the use of data aggregation in industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

The provision of quality of service for Wireless Sensor Networks is more relevant than ever now where wireless solutions with their flexibility advantages are considered for the extension/substitution of wired networks for a multitude of industrial applications. Scheduling algorithms that give end-to-end guarantees for both reliability and latency exist, but according to recent investigations is the achieved quality of service insufficient for most control applications. Data aggregation is an effective tool to significantly improve on end-to-end contention and energy efficiency compared to single packet transmissions. In practice, though, it is not extensively used for process data processing on the MAC layer. In this paper, we outline the challenges for the use of data aggregation in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks. We further extend SchedEx, a reliability-aware scheduling algorithm extension, for packet aggregation. Our simulations for scheduling algorithms from the literature show its great potential for industrial applications. Features for the inclusion of data aggregation into industrial standards such as WirelessHART are suggested, and remaining open issues for future work are presented and discussed.