On the performance of data distribution methods for wireless industrial networks

The vast amounts of data generated in wireless industrial networked deployments introduce significant challenges on the data distribution process to consumer nodes within the timeframes imposed by the requirements of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Using technological and methodological enablers, we can compose centralized or decentralized data distribution methods, which are able to help meeting the data requirements of the industrial applications. In this paper, using the technological enablers of WirelessHART, RPL and the methodological enabler of proxy selection as building blocks, we compose the protocol stacks of four different methods (both centralized and decentralized) for data distribution in wireless industrial networks over the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer. Although there have been several comparisons of relevant methods in the recent literature, we identify that most of those comparisons are either theoretical, or based on abstract simulation tools, unable to uncover the specific, detailed impacts of the methods to the underlying networking infrastructure. We implement the presented methods in OMNeT++ and we evaluate their performance via a detailed simulation analysis. Interestingly enough, we demonstrate that the careful selection of a limited set of proxies for data caching in the network can lead to increased data delivery success rate and low data access latency.