A DETERMINISTIC WIRELESS NETWORK FOR FEEDBACK CONTROL BASED ON IEEE 802.15.4

Networked feedback control systems, which have been adopted across the wide range of industries, suffer from limitations in mobility and flexibility because of the network wires. A wireless communication network, such as ZigBee based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, may be considered as an effective alternative to overcoming this problem. However, a communication network for use in feedback control must satisfy strict requirements on the deterministic behavior in terms of message latency and jitter. The ZigBee protocol however may introduce significant delays, which are randomly varying with time, into the system. This paper presents a deterministic wireless network that can be used for feedback control systems. The proposed approach is based on a time-triggered mechanism implemented on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The effectiveness of the proposed method is investigated using a series of experiments on the control of DC motors. Copyright © 2007 IFAC