Design model of an IEEE 802.11ad infrastructure for TSN-based industrial applications.

This paper addresses two main aspects related to the application of the IEEE 802.11ad technology in an industrial environment, i.e., to guarantee a low latency and reliable data delivery while reducing the number of the deployed Access Points (APs). First, we discuss the parameter settings of the IEEE802.11ad MAC which guarantee a low delay by exploiting the synchronous service periods (SPs) mechanism. Then, we propose a binary linear programming model to enhance the reliability of the system under the Frame Replication and Elimination for Reliability (FRER). The model minimizes the number of deployed APs by taking into account the constraints on the available synchronous SPs. We also propose two heuristics, based on the described mathematical model, in order to efficiently solve the design problem, then compare the computational performance of the proposed approaches. The reported computational results highlight the complementary features of the compared methods and provide useful guidelines about the usage of the proposed approaches.