Analysis of a radio physical layer fault in WirelessHART networks

This paper presents a procedure for testing physical layer fault tolerances of Wire/essHART, one of the most important industrial wireless sensor networks protocol. In order to evaluate radio weakness of this protocol, a set of conditions are evaluated in a typical network that can lead to possible faults. It has been identified an error situation that induces to a misinterpretation of the network health state, which is confirmed with experiments undergone using commercial equipment. Possible solutions to avoid misinterpretation of the network behavior are discussed and some possible solutions are presented at the end.