Comparative Study of Wireless Communication Protocols for Lower-Limb Exoskeleton Systems

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of three wireless communication methods in the context of a lower-limb exoskeleton system, comparing ESP-NOW in broadcast mode, traditional UDP/IP, and communication using Imocap-GIS devices. For this purpose, four different experimental architectures were designed, each comprising a controller (Jetson Nano) and a variable number of slave devices (nodes). The results indicate that ESP-NOW exhibited significantly lower latency times than UDP, positioning it as potentially more suitable for applications in wireless personal area networks that demand fast response times, such as real-time control systems. The experimental findings conclude that the ESP-NOW transmission protocol is prone to increased packet loss as the network expands, especially when the number of nodes increases from one to four, with a maximum loss of 8.6%. These observations emphasize the critical role of protocol selection, tailored to the application's specific requirements and the network environment's intricacies, in ensuring the reliability and efficiency of wireless communication systems.