The case for chain-based routing in industrial wireless sensor networks

Industrial wireless sensor networks are different from typical WSNs. One of the most notable differences is that in industrial deployments WSNs usually have to be integrated with wired industrial networks, because there are critical data flows that cannot be transmitted over the wireless medium. This paper investigates the use of a chain-based protocol that not only supports the integration with a wired industrial infrastructure, but also takes advantage of such an integration to deliver real-time performance even to nodes that could not be directly covered by a sink.