Cloud-based WirelessHART networking for Critical Industrial Monitoring and Control

Cloud-enabled wireless industrial sensor networks is an emerging paradigm in machine-type communication. It supports "device-centric" architectures that efficiently exploit intelligence at field device side replacing Host-centric architectures to handle critical condition. In this paper we propose a flexible architecture for integrating a self-contained network-embedded cloud system (Wireless Cloud Network, WCN) with a wireless industrial network infrastructure implementing the Time Synchronized Channel Hopping (TSCH) as supported by commercial WirelessHART systems. The WCN acts as a small-cell embedded network consisting of devices that gather and process pervasive information about the state of the industrial plant. Devices member of the cloud support advanced communication services and enable early and localized detection of dangerous conditions. In addition, they act as data processing centers distributed at the edge of the TSCH network. A hardware and software architecture is developed and tailored for WirelessHART (IEC 62591) protocol while preliminary experimental measurements are also carried out to evaluate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed system.