Multiple Access and Resource Sharing for Low Latency Critical Industrial Networks

In this chapter, medium access control (MAC) protocols are classified based on the channel access and, therefore, are divided in carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) based, time division multiple access (TDMA) based, multi‐channel based and priority based. In industrial wireless sensor networks, the use of TDMA and multi‐channel schemes offer suitable solutions for the regulatory control systems, open loop control systems, whereas the CSMA/CA based schemes are more suitable for alerting and monitoring systems. The chapter presents a dynamic TDMA based channel access scheme that targets low latency communications of critical data within a timely and reliable fashion. It also presents a MAC based channel access scheme that takes into consideration critical information and schedules channel time slots to facilitate communication. For communications, the IEEE MAC low latency deterministic network is used, which is updated to support emergency communications.