Channel Hopping in Wireless Process Control

Most of the applications in the industrial area use wireless for process monitoring where traditional wired sensors cannot be installed like, for example, hazardous or explosive environments. The use of wireless communication for process control has often been seen as troublesome with a lack of robustness and determinism, range problems and interference. Possible solutions include redundancy for robustness, channel hopping for interference and a higher transmit power for range problems. This paper aims to cover the interference issue by proposing a possible solution with channel hopping patterns, implemented on a low-power Arm based micro-controller paired with an IEEE 802.15.4 sub-GHz transceiver.