An Adaptive IEEE 802.15.4a TH-TDMA UWB Industrial Field Level Network

The authors introduce the deployment of IEEE 802.15.4a in industrial field level communication, which is unexplored so far. Impulse Radio-Time Hopping Ultra Wide Band (IR-TH UWB) physical layer is robust against dense multipath fading and interferences. However, they propose an adaption in Medium Access Control (MAC) to meet the major constraints of reliability and timeliness. The self configuring MAC overcomes the difficulties and limitations of specified Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA), slotted Aloha and Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS) mechanisms. Addressable TH codes in fixed time slots of modified superframe structure are used to handle asynchronous alarm requests during ongoing synchronous transmissions.