title: Reliability and availability evaluation of Wireless Sensor Networks for industrial applications.
abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) currently represent the best candidate to be adopted as the communication solution for the last mile connection in process control and monitoring applications in industrial environments. Most of these applications have stringent dependability (reliability and availability) requirements, as a system failure may result in economic losses, put people in danger or lead to environmental damages. Among the different type of faults that can lead to a system failure, permanent faults on network devices have a major impact. They can hamper communications over long periods of time and consequently disturb, or even disable, control algorithms. The lack of a structured approach enabling the evaluation of permanent faults, prevents system designers to optimize decisions that minimize these occurrences. In this work we propose a methodology based on an automatic generation of a fault tree to evaluate the reliability and availability of Wireless Sensor Networks, when permanent faults occur on network devices. The proposal supports any topology, different levels of redundancy, network reconfigurations, criticality of devices and arbitrary failure conditions. The proposed methodology is particularly suitable for the design and validation of Wireless Sensor Networks when trying to optimize its reliability and availability requirements.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Engineering and Automation, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Campus Universitário 59078-900, Natal, Brazil. ivan@dca.ufrn.br
authors.forename: Ivanovitch
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.forename: Luiz Affonso
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Guedes
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Portugal
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Vasques
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001331:Automation; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000295:instrumentation*; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007221:Industry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D059015:Wireless Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*