Simulation of Industrial Wireless Sensor Network (IWSN) protocols

Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSN) are preferred over bulky wired networks in industrial monitoring and automation. These sensors are used to access locations, which are technically unreachable. The use of IWSN not only reduced the cost of automation systems but also played a significant role in alarm management by real time data transfer. ZigBee and WirelessHART are already deployed protocols for IWSN. ISA100.11a developed by International Society of Automation was specially designed for IWSN. The main features of this standard are low power consumption, real time fast data transfer, scalability, security, reliability, coexistence with other network architectures and robustness in harsh industrial environments. To achieve these features, these protocols use layer structure, which provides security, fast and reliable data transfer. IEEE 802.15.4 is used at its physical layer with variable data slots. This paper presents the results of the simulation of ZigBee, WirelessHART and ISA100 done on Pymote framework, which is extended by one of the authors, and Castalia. This paper compares and discusses the simulated results obtained from all three protocols.