A Novel Medium Access Control Protocol for Real-Time Wireless Communications in Industrial Automation

In this paper, a novel Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for industrial Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is proposed and studied. The main challenge in industry automation systems is the ultra-low network latency with a target upper bound in the order of 1 ms while maintaining high network reliability and availability. The novelty of the proposed wireless MAC protocol resides in its similar latency performance as its counterpart in wired industrial LAN. First, the functional design of the MAC protocol is introduced. Then its performance results gained from hardware implementation (SystemC and VHDL) on an FPGA platform are presented. Finally, a real-time communication module which achieves the ultra-low latency required in industrial automation is described.