IEEE802.11 sensor networking

This paper deals with a smart-transducer wireless network for industrial applications. Thanks to its high popularity, a solution based on IEEE802.11 (also known as wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi) is experimentally investigated. A master-slave network organization is proposed to allow several sensors to be connected with generic Wi-Fi devices like PCs; a proprietary protocol over Internet Protocol (IP)/User Datagram Protocol (UDP) has also been developed. Last, some low-cost prototypes have been built to test the network behavior performances in terms of timing characteristics and power dissipation. Experimental results prove the applicability in a soft real-time (nontime-critical) industrial context.