Towards a Self-Configurable Middleware for Production Control Systems with Wireless Sensor Networks

The ubiquity of sensor networks is a common trend nowadays. Besides already existing sensor network applications, mainly based in the communication area, the integration in production system is a hot topic. This paper describes a self-configurable middleware architecture for such systems. Self-configuration is achieved by load balancing integrated in the middleware. With load balancing the system is able to handle error situations in the control system directly and reach a stable state. In the case a control node fails all the tasks running on this node are mapped automatically to other control nodes inside the system specifically the sensor network. Additionally, the load balancing leads to an energy-efficient balance between the control nodes. To enable the self-configuration and load balancing it is important to identify the requirements of all control nodes within the sensor network and their tasks.