Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cooperative Communication For High-Reliability Low-Latency Wireless Control
Cooperative Communication For High-Reliability Low-Latency Wireless Control
Cooperative Communication For High-Reliability Low-Latency Wireless Control
There is a need for a faster and more reliable protocol from the central controller to individual nodes, and in the
if we want to have a drop-in replacement for existing wired reverse direction from the slave nodes to the controller.
fieldbuses like SERCOS III, which provide a reliability of 108
and latency of 1 ms when communicating to tens of nodes. Following cellular convention, we refer to controller trans-
missions to slaves as downlink and slave transmissions to
B. Cooperative communication and multi-user diversity the controller as uplink. We assume that while normally,
the controller and all nodes are in-range of each other, bad
Channel hopping, contention-based MACs and multi-path fading events can cause transmissions to fail. The protocol uses
routing are commonly used time and frequency diversity different nodes as relays to overcome this. On the downlink
techniques in WSN-inspired technologies [8]. However, most side, nodes that have received messages from the controller act
strategies for WSNs or industrial control networks do not as simultaneous relays to deliver messages to their destinations
exploit spatial diversity from multiple antennas or user cooper- in a multi-hop fashion. A similar idea is applied for the uplink.
ation, except implicitly through higher-layer approaches. Low- When they are not transmitting, all nodes are listening. Nodes
latency applications like ours cannot use time diversity since that have successfully decoded messages act as simultaneous
the cycle time is shorter than the coherence time. Techniques relays for that message. This protocol is implemented by
like Forward Error Correction and Automatic Repeat Request dividing every communication cycle into three phases each
(ARQ) also do not provide much advantage [23]. Later in for downlink and uplink, with a small (but critical) scheduling
this paper, we demonstrate that frequency-diversity based tech- and acknowledgment phase mixed in.
niques also fall short, especially when the required throughput
pushes us to increase spectral efficiency. Consequently, our Resource assumptions
protocol leverages spatial diversity instead. We make a few assumptions regarding the hardware and
When there are multiple antennas in the system, we can environment to focus on the conceptual framework of the
harvest cooperative and multi-user diversity. Many researchers protocol. All the nodes share a universal addressing scheme
have studied these techniques in great detail; so our treatment and order, and messages contain their destination address.
here is limited. Laneman et al. [24] showed that cooperation Fundamentally, errors are caused by deep fades. Since the
amongst distributed antennas can provide full diversity without short cycle time puts us in the non-ergodic flat-fading regime,
the need for physical arrays. Even with a noisy inter-user time diversity cannot be used. All nodes are assumed to be
channel, multi-user cooperation increases capacity and leads capable of instantly decoding variable-rate transmissions [32].
to achievable rates that are robust to channel variations [25]. All nodes are half-duplex but can switch instantly from trans-
The prior work in cooperative communication tends to focus mit mode to receive mode.
on the asymptotic regimes of high SNR and rely highly on the
accuracy of fading distributions in analysis. By contrast, we Clocks on each of the nodes are perfectly synchronized in
are interested in moderate SNR regimes and do not want to both time and frequency. This could be achieved by adapting
rely on the accuracy of fading models.In the area of reliable techniques from [33]. Thus we can schedule time slots for
spectrum sensing for cognitive radios it was found that it did specific nodes without any overhead. The protocol relies on
not depend strongly on the details of fading distributions [26]. time/frequency synchronization to achieve simultaneous re-
It could instead rely upon the independence of fades across transmission of messages by multiple relays. We assume that
users. As we will see, it turns out the same idea applies here. if k relays simultaneously (with consciously introduced jitter2 )
transmit, then all receivers can extract signal diversity k.
Multi-antenna techniques have been widely implemented
in commercial wireless protocols like IEEE 802.11. [23], [27] A. Downlink and Uplink Phase I
use relays and a TDMA-based scheme to bring sender-diversity
Downlink Phase I (length TD1 ) is used by the controller
techniques to industrial control. Unfortunately, TDMA can
to broadcast all b-bit messages to all n slave nodes at rate
scale badly with network size. To scale better with network
RD1 = Tbn (Fig. 1, Column 1, nodes S0-S2 successfully
size, our protocol uses simultaneous transmission by many D1
relays, using some distributed space-time codes such as those receive the broadcast downlink packet). This is followed by
in [28][30], so that each receiver can harvest a large diversity Uplink Phase I (length TU1 ), in which the individual nodes
gain. This allows the protocol to achieve ultra-high-reliability transmit their messages (including one bit for an ACK/NAK to
without greatly decreasing throughput or increasing latency. the downlink message) to the controller one by one according
While we do not discuss the specifics of space-time code to a predetermined schedule at rate RU1 = Tb+1 U1 /n
= (b+1)n
TU1
implementation, recent work by Katabi et al. demonstrates by evenly dividing the time slots among all slave nodes. In
that it is possible to implement schemes that harvest sender Fig. 1, Column 2, nodes S0-S2 successfully transmit their
diversity using concurrent transmissions [31]. uplink packets to the controller. Since all nodes are listening all
the time, S2 and S0 are able to decode the message from S4,
even though it does not reach the controller. Nodes successful
II. P ROTOCOL D ESIGN
in Phase I are called strong users.
The Occupy CoW protocol exploits multi-user diversity by
using simultaneous relaying to enable ultra-reliable two-way B. Scheduling information
communication between a central controller (C) and a set of The scheduling phase (length TS ) is used by the controller
n slave nodes (S) within a cycle of length T . The protocol to transmit acknowledgments to the strong users (Fig. 1,
is described in this section and is also illustrated in Fig. 1.
Distinct messages (size b bits) must flow in a star topology 2 To transform spatial diversity into frequency-diversity [30].
4381
IEEE ICC 2015 - Communication Theory Symposium
INNER
Downlink, Phase 1 Uplink, Phase 1 Scheduling Phase Downlink, Phase 2 Downlink, Phase 3 Uplink, Phase 2 Uplink, Phase 3 Transmitting
Message + UL Ack Occupy Ack+Msg Occupy Ack+Msg Occupy Message Occupy Message
Received in Phase
Transmitting
C 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Message for Self
CURRENT STATE
SYMBOLS
S0
Message Successful
S1 Relay
OVERALL STATUS
S2
OUTER
UL OR DL Successful
S3 UL and DL Successful
S8 2 7
3 6
S9 4 5
Fig. 1. The seven phases of the Occupy CoW protocol illustrated by a representative example. The table shows a variety of successful downlink and uplink
transmissions using 0, 1 or 2 relays. S9 is unsuccessful for both downlink and uplink. The graph on the right shows the underlying link-strengths for the network.
Column 3). This is just 2 bits of information per slave node Note that the strong nodes that received the information
for downlink and uplink. This common-information about the from the controller in Phase I are the bottleneck for successful
systems state enables the controller and other nodes to share relay paths to other nodes during downlink.
a common schedule for relaying messages for the remaining
nodes. The strong nodes that are able to help must receive this D. Uplink Phase II and III
information, and it doesnt matter that other nodes do not have The calculated schedule from earlier phases allocates a slot
this information at this time since they have nothing useful to for each unsuccessful node from Uplink Phase I in Phases II
say. This common-information is passed on to the remaining (length TU2 ) and III (length TU3 ). Time slots are again divided
nodes in the downlink phases to follow. evenly among all n1 unsuccessful slaves. In the slot for each
The common ack information also allows the scheme to failed slave node, the slave and everyone who heard that slave
use possibly lower rates RD2 and RU2 , as we will see. The in an earlier uplink phase will simultaneously transmit the
strong nodes S0-S2 in Fig. 1 receive the ack information. relevant message at the new rates RU2 = nT1Ub and RU3 = nT1Ub .
2 3
4382
IEEE ICC 2015 - Communication Theory Symposium
4383
IEEE ICC 2015 - Communication Theory Symposium
Downlink
0.6 Phase 1 meter as another baseline scheme. We use this to tell us how
Downlink
much frequency diversity the performance of a scheme like
0.5
Fraction Occupy CoW is comparable to.
0.4
To get a fair bound, we do not want to restrict the diversity
Uplink
0.3 meter to non-adaptive repetition codes over subchannels the
Phase 1
way that we did earlier, but allow for intelligent coding. The
0.2
4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 frequency diversity is modeled as dividing the bandwidth into
SNR k independently faded blocks. An outer erasure code of rate
Ro = k 0 /k codes over all the blocks so the overall transmission
Fig. 4. Optimal fraction of time allocated for phase 1 in the 3-hop downlink as succeeds if k 0 blocks are decoded. Each block uses a capacity-
well as the 3-hop uplink schemes at various SNRs. Parameters used were 160 achieving inner code of rate Ri that succeeds if the blocks
bit messages, 30 users, 2 104 total bits. Both downlink and uplink perform
better with more time allocated for the bottleneck links to the controller; in capacity is greater than Ri . The aggregate information rate is
downlink this means a longer phase 1, and in uplink this means a longer last then given by Ro Ri W . The diversity required is defined
phase. as the smallest k, optimized over Ro and Ri to hit the desired
performance. This is illustrated in Fig. 5 where one can
look up the minimal frequency diversity required to achieve
It turns out that the aggregate throughput required (overall a probability of error of 109 at different combinations of
spectral efficiency considering all users) is the most important aggregate rate and SNRs.
parameter for choosing the number of relay hops in our
scheme. This is illustrated clearly in Fig. 3. This table shows This turns out to be equivalent to schemes that know which
the SNR required and the best number of hops to use for a of their diverse sub-channels are not too deeply faded and only
given n. With one node, clearly a 1 phase scheme is all that is transmit in those sub-channels (provided the encoding is not
possible. As the number of nodes increases, we transition from allowed to boost the local SNR in this channel to compensate
2-phase to 3-phase schemes being better. For n 5, aggregate for other deeply faded sub-channels).
rate is what matters in choosing a scheme, since 3-phase The two-hop Occupy CoW scheme with 30 users and
schemes have to deal with a 3 increase in the instantaneous aggregate rate of 0.25 bits/s/Hz achieves a probability of
rate due to each phases shorter time, and this dominates the error of 109 at 0.42dB. With identical constraints on SNR,
choice. In principle, at high enough aggregate rates, the one- bandwidth and probability of error, Fig. 5 shows that the
hop scheme will be best even with more users. But when the diversity meter requires a diversity of 201 with Ro = 1/3 and
target reliability is 109 , this is at absurdly high aggregate Ri = 3/4. Contrary to popular belief that we approach ideal
rates7 . In the practical regime, diversity wins. diversity from below, this shows that at finite-SNR and for
D. Protocol phase length optimization this intuitive sense of diversity, the multiuser diversity obtained
with 30 users is comparable to having 201 independently faded
It may seem natural to divide time evenly between phases, sub-channels for every point-to-point link between controller
but Fig. 4 shows that performance can be improved with a and nodes! This drastic difference is because Occupy CoW
slightly different allocation. It turns out that each phase of the gains diversity in one time slot instead of over many time slots,
protocol has a slightly different role to play in reaching the which allows for a lower effective Ri . Multiuser diversity is
target reliability and this is seen by looking at the optimal just better than frequency diversity in our context.
phase lengths. For reasons of space, we do not discuss this
here, and only point out the most important fact: for the SNR IV. ROBUSTNESS TO M ODELING E RROR
7 We estimate this is around rate 40 that would correspond to 40 users Given the extremely low error probabilities we are targeting
each of which wants to simultaneously achieve a spectral efficiency of 1. in a wireless setting, it is natural to question the impact of
4384
IEEE ICC 2015 - Communication Theory Symposium
0 1 2 3 4 5dB 7 9 10 dB 0.35
20
modeling error and uncertainty. Should anyone really trust the 18
requirement robustly can become impossible (when the desired Offset = 0.1
20 Optimized and Unoptimized
tolerance to modeling error is itself greater than the maximum 10
tolerable probability of link failure). For moderate to large
40
network sizes (n 25), the protocol only has a small SNR 10
Probability of world-ending Offset = 0
penalty ( 3dB). We conclude that Occupy CoW does not 60
asteroid during any ms Unoptimized
10
rely on perfect knowledge of deep fading distributions and Offset = 0
achieves high-reliability by relying on the independence8 of 80 Optimized
10
link failures. 5 0 5 10 15 20
SNR (dB)
Does the optimization of phase lengths from Sec. III-D
greatly change in the presence of modeling errors? Fig. 8 Fig. 8. Performance of three-hop downlink in the presence and absence
considers three different phase length allocations for the 2- of a worst-case modeling error that causes links to fail with a 0.1 higher
hop downlink case: the nave 50/50 allocation, an allocation probability9 regardless of SNR.
4385
IEEE ICC 2015 - Communication Theory Symposium
to be effective in yielding a robust strategy, the fading model [22] J. Akerberg et al., Future research challenges in wireless sensor
need not be highly accurate. and actuator networks targeting industrial automation, in Industrial
Informatics (INDIN), 2011 9th IEEE International Conference on.
IEEE, 2011, pp. 410415.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS [23] A. Willig, How to exploit spatial diversity in wireless industrial
Thanks to Venkat Anantharam, Milos Jorgovanovic and networks, Annual Reviews in Control, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 49 57,
2008.
Kris Pister for useful discussions. We also thank the BWRC
[24] J. Laneman et al., Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: Efficient
students, staff, faculty and industrial sponsors and the NSF protocols and outage behavior, IEEE Transactions on Information
for a Graduate Research Fellowship and grants CNS-0932410, Theory, vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 30623080, Dec 2004.
CNS-1321155, and ECCS-1343398. [25] A. Sendonaris et al., User cooperation diversity. Part I. System
description, IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 51, no. 11,
R EFERENCES pp. 19271938, Nov 2003.
[1] M. Weiner et al., Design of a low-latency, high-reliability wireless [26] S. Mishra et al., Cooperative Sensing among Cognitive Radios, in
communication system for control applications, in IEEE International IEEE International Conference on Communications, vol. 4, June 2006,
Conference on Communications, ICC 2014, Sydney, Australia, June 10- pp. 16581663.
14, 2014, 2014, pp. 38293835. [27] S. Girs et al., Increased reliability or reduced delay in wireless
[2] G. Fettweis, The Tactile Internet: Applications and Challenges, Ve- industrial networks using relaying and Luby codes, in IEEE 18th
hicular Technology Magazine, IEEE, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 6470, March Conference on Emerging Technologies Factory Automation, 2013, Sept
2014. 2013, pp. 19.
[3] SERCOS news, the automation bus magazine. [Online]. Available: [28] F. Oggier et al., Perfect spacetime block codes, IEEE Trans. Inform.
http://www.sercos.com/literature/pdf/sercos news 0114 en.pdf Theory, vol. 52, no. 9, pp. 38853902, 2006.
[4] E. V. Buskirk, Inhuman Microphone app circumvents [29] P. Elia et al., Perfect Space-Time Codes for Any Number of Antennas,
occupy wall street megaphone ban, 2011. [Online]. Available: IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 11, pp. 38533868, 2007.
http://www.wired.com/2011/12/inhuman-microphone/ [30] G. Wu et al., Selective Random Cyclic Delay Diversity for HARQ in
[5] R. Zurawski, Industrial Communication Technology Handbook. CRC Cooperative Relay, in IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking
Press, 2005. Conference (WCNC), 2010, April 2010, pp. 16.
[6] S. K. Sen, Fieldbus and Networking in Process Automation. CRC [31] H. Rahul et al., SourceSync: A Distributed Wireless Architecture for
Press, 2014. Exploiting Sender Diversity, in Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM
[7] A. Willig et al., Wireless Technology in Industrial Networks, in 2010 Conference, ser. SIGCOMM 10. New York, NY, USA: ACM,
Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 93, no. 6, June 2005, pp. 11301151. 2010, pp. 171182.
[8] P. Zand et al., Wireless Industrial Monitoring and Control Networks: [32] S. Verdu et al., Variable-rate channel capacity, IEEE Transactions on
The Journey So Far and the Road Ahead, J. Sensor and Actuator Information Theory, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 26512667, 2010.
Networks, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 123152, 2012. [33] Q. Huang et al., Practical Timing and Frequency Synchronization
[9] A. Willig, An architecture for wireless extension of PROFIBUS, in for OFDM-Based Cooperative Systems, IEEE Transactions on Signal
The 29th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, Processing, vol. 58, no. 7, pp. 37063716, July 2010.
vol. 3, Nov 2003, pp. 23692375 Vol.3. [34] Introduction to SERCOS III with industrial ethernet. [Online].
[10] P. Morel et al., Requirements for wireless extensions of a FIP fieldbus, Available: http://www.sercos.com/technology/sercos3.htm
in 1996 IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory [35] S. Hanly et al., Multiaccess fading channels. II. Delay-limited capac-
Automation, vol. 1, Nov 1996, pp. 116122 vol.1. ities, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 44, no. 7, pp.
[11] G. Cena et al., Hybrid wired/wireless networks for real-time commu- 28162831, Nov 1998.
nications, Industrial Electronics Magazine, IEEE, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. [36] L. Ozarow et al., Information theoretic considerations for cellular
820, Mar 2008. mobile radio, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 43,
[12] I. F. Akyildiz et al., Wireless sensor networks: a survey, Computer no. 2, pp. 359378, May 1994.
Networks, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 393422, Mar 2002. [37] A. Lozano et al., Non-peaky signals in wideband fading channels:
[13] A. Bonivento et al., System Level Design for Clustered Wireless Achievable bit rates and optimal bandwidth, Wireless Communications,
Sensor Networks, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 3, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 246257, January 2012.
no. 3, pp. 202214, Aug 2007. [38] W. Yang et al., Quasi-Static Multiple-Antenna Fading Channels at
[14] M. A. Yigitel et al., QoS-aware MAC Protocols for Wireless Sensor Finite Blocklength, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 60,
Networks: A Survey, Comput. Netw., vol. 55, no. 8, pp. 19822004, no. 7, pp. 42324265, 2014.
June 2011. [39] G. D. Forney, Exponential error bounds for erasure, list, and decision
[15] A. Willig, Recent and Emerging Topics in Wireless Industrial Com- feedback schemes, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 14,
munications: A Selection, pp. 102124, May 2007. pp. 206220, 1968.
[16] G. Scheible et al., Unplugged but connected [Design and implementa- [40] S. Suri et al., Analysis for Cooperative Communication for
tion of a truly wireless real-time sensor/actuator interface], Industrial High-Reliability Low-Latency Wireless Control. [Online]. Available:
Electronics Magazine, IEEE, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 2534, Summer 2007. http://eecs.berkeley.edu/gireeja/analysisOccupy.pdf
[17] V. Gungor et al., Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks: Challenges, [41] R. Narasimhan et al., Finite-SNR diversity-multiplexing tradeoff of
Design Principles, and Technical Approaches, IEEE Transactions on space-time codes, in Proc. of IEEE Conference on Communications,
Industrial Electronics, vol. 56, no. 10, pp. 42584265, Oct 2009. vol. 1, May 2005, pp. 458462.
[18] Z. A. Standard, ZigBee PRO Specfication, October 2007. [42] Z. Rezki et al., Finite diversity multiplexing tradeoff over spatially
correlated channels, in Vehicular Technology Conference, 2006. VTC-
[19] A. Kim et al., When HART goes wireless: Understanding and im-
plementing the WirelessHART standard, in IEEE International Con- 2006 Fall. 2006 IEEE 64th. IEEE, 2006, pp. 15.
ference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, 2008, pp. [43] A. S. Y. Poon et al., Degrees of freedom in multiple-antenna channels:
899907. a signal space approach, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
[20] ISA100, ISA100.11a, An update on the Process Automation Applica- vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 523536, Feb 2005.
tions Wireless Standard, in ISA Seminar, Orlando, Florida, 2008.
[21] International Electrotechnical Commission, Industrial Communication
Networks-Fieldbus Specifications, WirelessHART Communication Net-
work and Communication Profile. British Standards Institute, 2009.
4386