Cyber-Physical Control Over Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks With Packet Loss

There is a growing interest in design and implementation of cyber-physical control systems over Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs). Thanks to the use of wireless communications and distributed architectures, these systems encompass many advantages as compared to traditional networked control systems using hard wirelines. While WSANs are enabling a new generation of control systems, they also introduce considerable challenges for Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning. In this chapter the authors examine some of the major QoS challenges raised by WSANs, including resource constraints, platform heterogeneity, dynamic network topology, and mixed traffic. These challenges make it difficult to fulfill the requirements of cyber-physical control in terms of reliability and real-time.