A Probabilistic Framework for Protocol Conversions in IIoT Networks With Heterogeneous Gateways

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) supports multi-technology applications and data flow across IIoT networks incurs protocol conversion. Hence, an accurate estimation of network performance during data transmission must include the protocol conversion overhead. This overhead becomes significant in large IIoT networks, where data transmission relies on multi-hop transmission over specialized multi-technology gateways, which are heterogeneous in their technology support. This letter provides a probabilistic framework, which quantifies protocol conversions incurred by a packet while traversing through a heterogeneous gateway route. Results derived here can be used for forecasting the protocol conversion overhead, while designing network deployments supporting efficient traffic flows.