A New Simulation View on Networked Industrial Embedded Computing

After several years of research effort were spent in the field of wireless sensor networks (WSN) the time has come to shift from a ``just monitor'' to a ``monitor and act'' principle, i.e. to wireless sensor and actuator networks. WSANs are especially interesting for open and closed loop control systems used to increase the level of automation in industrial applications. These new applications impose tight constraints regarding the timing and energy consumption behaviour on the nodes present in the network. State-of-the-art simulation environments, which are the foundation for developing algorithms and protocols for the networks, do not properly address these requirements. In my work, I propose a new simulation and modeling methodology especially suited for the needs of embedded computing in industrial environments. The most important factor in such applications is the timing behaviour of software and hardware components, which is directly proportional to the energy consumption of the nodes. To gain the needed level of timing accuracy by maintaining acceptable simulation performance I combine several established concepts to model the hardware at the system level, to include real-life code into the simulation and to model the RF-channel.