Abstract

In the last two decades, Wireless control systems, became an active research topic. This is due to its flexibility and reduction in implementation costs. However, these systems suffer from problems concerning the implementation issues. These problems arise due to the limitation in data rates and the considerable delay in the wireless network, and the ability to manage this network. To overcome this conflict, this paper presents a way to implement a wireless sensor/ actuator network that uses a wireless sensor network for the measurement phase. This network is driven by a TinyOS system; while a CAN field bus is employed for the actuator drive. The CAN field bus software is implemented by using C, while the code for the wireless sensor nodes is written in nesC language. The resulting distributed control system (DCS) is used to control the temperature of a water path. Velocity PID control algorithm was implemented to insure that the control system satisfies the bumpless transfer and also anti-windup concepts such manual/auto changeover does not affect the operation. simple GUI was also designed to monitor, set point changing, PID tuning, and control the switching between manual and auto operation. Real-time experimental results are obtained for the system to prove its operation.