Antenna Diversity to Increase Reliability in Industrials Wireless Sensors Networks

Abstract

Industrial WSNs are gradually gaining space in industry due to low cost of installation and maintenance. However, RF communications systems are prone to several propagation phenomena which can compromise reliability in terms of missed message deadlines. This work aims to increase the robustness of industrial WSN. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to correct inherent problems in wireless communications, some of which are channel noise, interference, and multipath fading. Multipath can be considered the main factor that makes communications in wireless sensor networks a real challenge when compared to other types of mediums, such as optical fiber, cable, or even directional radio transmissions. In this sense, antenna diversity is proposed as a solution to deal with these effects, with the aim of improving radio reliability to make the use of dense industrial WSN feasible. The potential of antenna diversity in WSN is not fully exploited in industrial applications. This article presents the combination of selection technique for industrial WSN through an algorithm that selects the transceiver port that has the highest link quality indicator and performs antenna switching in the radio modules. The results obtained are analyzed to verify the diversity gain by using antenna spatial diversity at reception and thus reduce packet error rate. The results corroborate with theory by increasing radio reliability in terms of diversity gain, quadrupling the received signal power when the correct antenna is chosen.