Highly reliable and delay bound wireless sensor network protocol for oil and gas plants

Abstract

Communication networks for oil and gas plants predominantly employ wired communication infrastructure. The wired communication infrastructure is used to carry control and monitoring data used for plant process control and automation. Data carried on plants networks are of critical nature and thus require strict Quality of Services (QoS) treatment. The existing wired communication protocols provide required reliability and delay bound performance. However, wired communication infrastructure imposes high cost and lack flexibility. The advancements in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) make it an attractive alternative for wire based plant networks because of WSN low cost and flexibility. However, WSN suffers from error prone wireless medium, limited resources and lack of central control which make it challenging to meet plant networks QoS strict requirements. In this thesis, we propose a novel WSN architecture protocol called HARD for oil and gas plant networks which meet the strict QoS requirements. We have formulated the design guidelines for plant network WSN topology to meet the given QoS requirements. The maximum delay bound and the reliability performance have been formulated. Simulation results confirmed the analysis of the HARD protocol delay bound of 40ms and showed reliability performance of near 100% for experiments with failure probability of 60% and below.