Packet prioritizing in an industrial wireless network

摘要

A wireless communication device providing a node in the network includes a wireless transmitter, a wireless receiver, a transmission buffer, and a packet prioritizing unit configured to obtain data relating to packets to be transmitted in the network, obtain indications of the remaining lifetime of the packets, where the indications are based on the time needed for reaching a destination node, prioritize the packets according to the remaining life time indications, where the prioritization is made in ascending order from an indication of a low remaining life time to a high remaining lifetime, and place the packets in the transmission buffer for transmission according to the prioritization.

主权项

1. A method for prioritizing the sending of packets in an industrial wireless network (WN), the method being performed by a wireless communication device being a node in the industrial wireless communication network controlling an industrial process, the method comprising the steps of:
obtaining, data relating to packets to be transmitted in the network, the packets comprising packets associated with different applications; obtaining indications of the remaining lifetime of said packets, said indications being based on the time needed for reaching a destination node, wherein the indications of remaining life time are determined differently for different applications based on the importance of the application and the indications of remaining lifetime of packets related to the control of the process are based also on the period of control in which measurements are fresh enough to have any use in the control; prioritizing the data packets according to the remaining life time indications, where the prioritization is made in ascending order from an indication of a low remaining life time to high remaining lifetime; and transmitting the packets according to the prioritization, wherein the obtaining of data comprises receiving a packet having an indication of remaining lifetime and updating the indication of remaining lifetime according to an updating function
TTL(n)=TTL(n−1)−k*C*P/(P−t) or TTL(n−1)−k*C*(P−t)/P, where TTL(n) is the indication of remaining life time for the received packet of the node, TTL(n−1) is the indication of a remaining life time of a previous node, k is a constant 0