Performance Analysis of Wireless Network Measurement Control System using Matlab/Simulink

Traditional network control system offers many advantages but requires cables to inter-connect devices, which leads to high installation and maintenance costs due to low scalability and high failure rate of connectors. As a result, wireless technologies have gained an enormous success in the consumer goods industry in the last few years. Wireless Networked Measurement Control System (WNMCS) is a distributed control system based on the wireless measurement network, suitable for use at the device level of an automation system. For that purpose, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) can be employed. In this paper, a simulation model of WNMCS is designed on the basis of Matlab/Simulink, and the suitability of wireless sensor networks for networked control loop is shown. Real time character is the common request of control systems and multitasks is the mainstream of the distributed control system nowadays. Aiming at selecting communication protocol in the wireless networks, the TrueTime toolbox is applied to establishing the simulation model of the Wireless Network Measurement Control System (WNMCS). We compare the performance of WPAN-based WNMCS to that of WLAN-based WNMCS. Experimental results show that WPAN-based WNMCS is a very promising alternative for wireless industrial networking with short superframe, and WLAN-based WNMCS is more suitable for high throughput application.