Application of parallel redundancy in a Wi-Fi-based WNCS using OPNET

A powerful approach to improve the performance of wireless communication is the parallel redundant transmission with dual-radio wireless devices. To further verify this approach in this work, an OPNET simulation is performed on a star-topology WNCS workcell with 30 sensor and actuator pairs that are equipped with dual-radios for parallel redundancy. The applied wireless simulation model is based on IEEE 802.11g (Wi-Fi) standard and a quantitative analysis of the effect of interference in an industrial environment, is presented. This study proved that parallel redundancy improves system performance under different interference environments.