Wireless sensor actuator networks (WSANs) are gaining rapid adoption in industrial automation and manufacturing due to their low deployment cost and flexibility. While early success of industrial WSANs focused on monitoring applications, there are significant advantages, and also challenges, in employing WSANs in feedback control applications, since they require careful design and testing of both network configurations as well as control algorithms.

Wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSANs) are designed to collect and disseminate information using a physically distributed collection of wireless nodes and multi-hop protocols. WSANs are gaining rapid adoption in industrial automation and manufacturing applications due to their low deployment cost, robustness, and configuration flexibility. While the early success of industrial WSANs has been focused on monitoring applications, there are significant advantages, and also challenges, when WSANs are used in feedback control applications.