APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR SUPPORTING WIRELESS ACTUATORS AND OTHER DEVICES IN PROCESS CONTROL SYSTEMS

摘要

A system includes a wireless leaf node (110a-110e) configured to modify operation of an industrial process. The system also includes a plurality of wireless access points (108a-108e, 112, 112a-112b) configured to transmit data to the wireless leaf node in specified time slots (306, 306a-306o) and to receive an acknowledgement from the wireless leaf node in response to successful receipt of the data by the wireless leaf node. Various communication schemes are disclosed for supporting communications between the wireless leaf node and the access points. Each access point could also include a local slot manager (502) configured to assign the specified time slots for that access point to communicate with the wireless leaf node. The wireless leaf node could represent a wireless actuator.