Utilizing parallelization and embedded multicore architectures for scheduling large-scale wireless mesh networks

Abstract

WirelessHART™ was released in September 2007 and became an IEC standard in April 2010 (IEC 62591). It is the first open wireless communication standard specifically designed for process measurement and control applications deployed in harsh and noisy environments. WirelessHART distinguishes itself from other public standards by maintaining a central Network Manager. The Network Manager is responsible for maintaining up-to-date routes and communication schedules for the network, thus guaranteeing the reliable and real-time network communications. To deal with the intensive computation requirement in a centralized WirelessHART Network Manager, particularly of middle or large scale network sizes, in this article, we utilize parallelization techniques to implement the Network Manager on embedded multicore architectures. By leveraging the multicore capabilities of the AMD Embedded G-Series Dual-Core processor, we utilize the Texas Multicore Technologies' (TMT) SequenceL™ language and runtime environment to parallelize the algorithms proposed in our previous work for constructing reliable routing graphs and real-time communication schedule. Our experiments show that AMD Embedded G-Series is an ideal platform for medium to large size WirelessHART network and SequenceL™ language can help significantly reduce the development cycle and further improve the algorithm efficiency and system performance in embedded multicore architectures.