Reliability and availability evaluation of wireless sensor networks for industrial applications

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2012

Authors

Ivanovitch Silva (Author) Other; Luiz Affonso Guedes (Author) Other; Paulo Portugal (Author) FEUP; Francisco Vasques (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Sensors

Vol. 12 No. 1

Pages: 806-838

ISSN: 1424-3210

Publisher: MDPI

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 135 Citations

ISI Web of Science

Scopus - 175 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-002-H4A

DOI: 10.3390/s120100806

Abstract (EN): Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) currently represent the best candidate to be adopted as the communication solution for the last mile connection in process control and monitoring applications in industrial environments. Most of these applications have stringent dependability (reliability and availability) requirements, as a system failure may result in economic losses, put people in danger or lead to environmental damages. Among the different type of faults that can lead to a system failure, permanent faults on network devices have a major impact. They can hamper communications over long periods of time and consequently disturb, or even disable, control algorithms. The lack of a structured approach enabling the evaluation of permanent faults, prevents system designers to optimize decisions that minimize these occurrences. In this work we propose a methodology based on an automatic generation of a fault tree to evaluate the reliability and availability of Wireless Sensor Networks, when permanent faults occur on network devices. The proposal supports any topology, different levels of redundancy, network reconfigurations, criticality of devices and arbitrary failure conditions. The proposed methodology is particularly suitable for the design and validation of Wireless Sensor Networks when trying to optimize its reliability and availability requirements.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 33