SDMAC: A Software-Defined MAC for Wi-Fi to Ease Implementation of Soft
Real-time Applications
- Gianluca Cena ,
- Stefano Scanzio ,
- Adriano Valenzano
Abstract
In distributed control systems where devices are connected through
Wi-Fi, direct access to low-level MAC operations may help applications
to meet their timing constraints. In particular, the ability to timely
control single transmission attempts on air, by means of software
programs running at the user space level, eases the implementation of
mechanisms aimed at improving communication timeliness and reliability.
Relevant examples are deterministic traffic scheduling, seamless channel
redundancy, rate adaptation algorithms, and so on.
In this paper, a novel architecture is defined, we call SDMAC, which in
its current embodiment relies on conventional Linux PCs equipped with
commercial Wi-Fi adapters. Preliminary SDMAC implementation on a real
testbed and its experimental evaluation showed that integrating this
paradigm in existing protocol stacks constitutes a viable option, whose
performance suits a wide range of applications characterized by soft
real-time requirements.Jun 2019Published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics volume 15 issue 6 on pages 3143-3154. 10.1109/TII.2018.2873205