Fieldbus Protocol Research Articles

Security Analysis and Enhancement of INTERBUS Protocol in ICS Based on Colored Petri Net

The integration of buses in industrial control systems, fueled by advancements such as the Internet of Things (IoT), has led to their widespread adoption, significantly enhancing operational efficiency. However, with the increasing interconnection of systems, ensuring the security of bus communications and protocols has become an urgent priority. This paper focuses on addressing the specific security concerns associated with the widely adopted INTERBUS protocol—a fieldbus protocol. Our approach leverages the theory of colored Petri nets (CPN) for modeling, enabling a comprehensive analysis of the protocol’s security. Rigorous formal verification and analysis of the security protocol are conducted by employing the Dolev–Yao adversary model. Our investigation reveals the presence of three critical vulnerabilities: replay attacks, tampering, and impersonation. To fortify the security of the protocol, we propose the introduction of a key distribution center and the utilization of hash values. Through meticulous analysis and verification, our proposed enhancements effectively reinforce the security performance of the INTERBUS protocol.

Design and Implementation of Fully Integrated Automation Scheme Based on Heterogeneous Field-bus Network

In view of the current situation of coexistence of various fieldbus protocols, the paper presents an totally integrated automation scheme based on Ethernet. The Ethernet technology can integrate the information of different field devices in the enterprise, and realize the unified data management, communication, programming and configuration. The paper systematically expounds the concept of totally integrated automation, realize totally integrated automation scheme based on Ethernet communication technology by designing protocol conversion gateway and applying to serial server. The solution is very suitable for information integration in enterprise, as the information exchange is realized at the device level, and the hardware design costs low.

Simulation analysis of communication performance of PROFIBUS in single and multiple master mode

With the application of digital information technology and communication technology, industrial intelligence and integration also began to develop rapidly, and the importance of the research on bus communication in industrial control communication also increased. As the first international bus standard, PROFIBUS has been widely used in the field of industrial control; in recent years, it was mainly used to connect devices to the control layer and convert data through token transmission. Based on the understanding of the transmission mechanism of PROFIBUS fieldbus protocol, this article carries out a simulation study on its communication performance. Through analysis of the data link layer, changing the target token cycle time (high and low priority) and random setting each site message number, as well as the number of master station and slave station, how the main token latency and packet loss rate and efficiency of bus affect the change of performance parameters was observed. For multiple communication systems, the relationship between the address value on the main token ring and transport performance is found by experiments on the site address value on the main token ring and the target token cycle time value. Finally, the scheduling algorithm is applied to the communication scheduling of PROFIBUS fieldbus. The results confirm that the scheduling algorithm has better transmission efficiency than the traditional MAC media access protocol under the condition that the load rate does not exceed 100%, which makes up for the shortcomings of the original PROFIBUS bus system and makes the communication performance better.

Low Power Sensor Data Monitoring and Controlling Application Due to IOT Based Distributed Solar Panel

A distributed solar panel control system that allows the user to collect, store, and control and monitor a solar farm situated in remote locations anywhere on the planet. The panel orientation is constantly adjusted according to the sunlight using a servo/stepper motor mechanism aiming to generate maximum power. Each panel is connected to a CAN bus network and comes fitted with sensors that measures parameters such as power, current, voltage, and light intensity and panel orientation. The collected data is transmitted to an IoT gateway using the CAN field bus protocol. The IoT gateway is built with Wi-Fi capability that allows it to get connected to the internet via a Wi-Fi router. The gateway is in constant communication with a cloud platform, where the data gets stored and forwarded to the user. The user can now subscribe to this cloud platform and able to view the collected data, and control and monitor the solar farm in real-time from a remote location from his/her smart phone app.

Message delay time distribution analysis for controller area network under errors

Controller area network (CAN) is a widely used fieldbus protocol in various industrial applications. To understand the network behavior under errors for the optimal design of networked control systems, the message response time of the CAN network needs to be analyzed. In this study, a novel delay time distribution analysis method for the response messages is proposed when considering errors. In this method the complex message queues are decomposed into typical message patterns and cases. First, a stochastic fault model is developed, and the probability factor is defined to calculate the error distribution. Then the message delay time distribution for the single slave node configuration is analyzed based on the error distribution. Next, based on the delay time distribution analysis of typical patterns and cases, an analysis framework of message delay time distribution for the master/slave configuration is developed. The testbed is constructed and case studies are conducted to demonstrate the proposed methodology under different network configurations. Experimental results show that the delay time distributions calculated by the proposed method agree well with the actual observations

Priority-Aware Wireless Fieldbus Protocol for Mixed-Criticality Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Industrial wireless sensor networks are becoming popular for critical monitoring and control applications in industrial automation systems. For such type of applications, providing reliable real-time performance regarding data delivery is considered as a fundamental challenge. The problem becomes more prominent with mixed-criticality systems, where different data flow with different levels of criticality (importance) coexist and characterized by different requirements regarding delay and reliability. In this paper, we propose a wireless fieldbus protocol to enable real-time communication and service differentiation for cluster-based mixed-criticality networks. A process monitoring scenario of plastic extrusion is used to define the protocol requirements and elaborate the working principle of the proposed work. In our proposed protocol, each data flow is scheduled for channel access based on its criticality level using a distributed prioritized medium access mechanism that ensures a guaranteed channel access for the most critical traffic over other traffic types. The performance of the proposed protocol is analyzed analytically using a discrete-time Markov chain model to evaluate the performance in terms of delay and throughput. Moreover, the extensive simulations are conducted to prove the analytical claims and different performance assessments are provided, which also demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared with the related existing work.

Intrusion Detection of the ICS Protocol EtherCAT

Control mechanisms like Industrial Controls Systems (ICS) and its subgroup SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) are a prerequisite to automate industrial processes. While protection of ICS on process management level is relatively straightforward—well known office IT security mechanisms can be used—protection on field bus level is harder to achieve as there are real-time and production requirements like 24x7 to consider. One option to improve security on field bus level is to introduce controls that help to detect and to react on attacks. This paper introduces an initial set of intrusion detection mechanisms for the field bus protocol EtherCAT. To this end existing Ethernet attack vectors including packet injection and man-in-the-middle attacks are tested in an EtherCAT environment, where they could interrupt the EtherCAT network and may even cause physical damage. Based on the signatures of such attacks, a preprocessor and new rule options are defined for the open source intrusion detection system Snort demonstrating the general feasibility of intrusion detection on field bus level.

IoT-Bus for micro-grid control and local energy management based on the IEEE Std. 802.15.4

To tackle the impacts of the intermittent infeed of renewable energies, power system management evolves from a centralized to a decentralized grid control strategy, thereby micro-grids are getting more relevant, especially regarding the self-sustaining energy supply of building complexes and premises. For control of the power flow and for energy management purposes within micro-grids, the exchange of information between the components is essential. A range of several hundred meters, data rates of several hundred kbits, and low latency are key requirements in widespread premises. This paper addresses the investigation and development of a novel communication technology that is highly suitable for a robust and interoperable micro-grid control and local energy management. The introduced fieldbus protocol is based on RS-485 and an adaption of the IEEE Std. 802.15.4 in combination with the modern Internet of Things protocols. Besides the introduction of the so-called IoT-Bus protocol, the evolutionary approach of adapting and combining existing technologies is presented.

Implementation of Protocol Conversion Control Board for Industrial Communication

Recently, many industrial instruments faced the problem of protocol compatibility with the external monitoring and control system. This is due to different environments, field bus devices and protocols. Therefore, it needs to deal with the problem on how to communicate with each other between different protocols. For this purpose, this study is implemented in the main control board and sub-communication board to support the industrial communication protocol conversion. The sub-communication board is designed to ensure the communication connection of CAN bus and Ethernet. The ATmega 2560 microcontroller is used as the processor of the main control board and 4 RS485 serial slots for sub-board are placed too. One of those is used to communicate CAN bus and Ethernet. The sub-communication board is consisted of the ATmega 128 microcontroller, CAN Transceiver and Ethernet connecter. The performance test results have successfully showed the transmission and conversion.

An IoT Middleware Framework for Industrial Applications

Starting from the RFID and the wireless sensor networks, the Internet of connected things has attracted the attention of major IT companies and later, of the industrial environment that recognized the concept as one of their key axes for future growth and development. The implementation of IoT in the industrial environment raises some significant issues related to the diversity of fieldbuses, the large number of devices and their configuration. The requirements related to reliability, security and real-time are very important. This paper proposes an industrial IoT and communications at the edge framework which has some outstanding features related to: the easy integration of fieldbuses and devices used in industrial environments with automatic configuration features, integration of multiple middleware technologies (CORBA, OPC and DDS), the uncoupling of the industrial activity from the publishing data on the Internet, security at different levels of the framework. Another important feature of the proposed framework is that it is based on mature standards and on open source or public implementations of these standards. The framework is modular, allowing the easy integration of new fieldbus protocols, middleware technologies and new objects in the client application. This paper is focused mainly on CORBA and DDS approaches.

Research and Development of Multiple Protocol Compatible Device Managing System

Various field bus protocols come up with the development of technology, each device manufactures are using their own way to managing assets in their assets function managing systems, the shortage of this self-enclosed solution is self-evident. Users are looking forward to more and more functions realized by filed device, thus the devices linked into field bus are getting more and more complicated. To echo this needs, FDT/DTM technology is used in process of developing device managing system. FDT technology is one truly liberal technology, users could easily transfer device data into useful information, beyond the influence of their filed bus protocol, device vendor, as well as the device type, to realize supporting various field bus in one system.

A flexible acquisition cycle for incompletely defined fieldbus protocols

Real time data-acquisition from fieldbuses strongly depends on the network type and protocol used. Currently, there is an impressive number of fieldbuses, some of them are completely defined and others are incompletely defined. In those from the second category, the time variable, the main element in real-time data acquisition, does not appear explicitly. Examples include protocols such as Modbus ASCII/RTU, M-bus, ASCII character-based, and so on. This paper defines a flexible acquisition cycle based on the Master-Slave architecture that can be implemented on a Master station, called a Base Station Gateway (BSG). The BSG can add a timestamp for temporal location of data. It also presents a possible extension for the Modbus protocol, developed as simple and low cost solution based on existing hardware.

Based on Profibus-DP and Modbus Protocol Conversion Inverter Communication Interface Design

With the development of factory automation technology, Profibus-DP fieldbus and Modbus protocol has become the most widely used communication technology at home and abroad, but the choices which can accomplish the data conversion between these two devices is not enough. According to the Modbus RTU communication agreement for the use of frequency converter, the article provides a kind of communication interface based on Profibus-DP and the Modbus communication protocol conversion which mainly introduces its hardware and software design scheme, and expounds the dependability and real-time performance of the communication interface.

IEC 61800 기반 파워 드라이버 시스템을 위한 EtherCAT 슬레이브 모듈 구현

Industrial network, often referred to as fieldbus, becomes an indispensable component for intelligent manufacturing systems. Thus, in order to satisfy the real-time requirements of field devices such as sensors, actuators, and controllers, numerous fieldbus protocols have been developed. But, the application of fieldbus has been limited due to the high cost of hardware and the difficulty in interfacing with multi-vendor products. As an alternative to fieldbus, the Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) technology is being adapted to the industrial environment. However, the crucial technical obstacle of Ethernet is its non-deterministic behavior that cannot satisfy the real-time requirements. Recently, the EtherCAT protocol becomes a very promising alternative for real-time industrial application due to the elimination of uncertainties in Ethernet. This paper focuses on the implementation of the IEC 61800 based real-time EtherCAT network for multi-axis smart driver. To demonstrate the feasibility of the implemented EtherCAT slave module, its synchronization performance is evaluated on the experimental EtherCAT testbed with a single axis smart driver.

A bandwidth allocation scheme in fieldbuses

Field devices in factory automation and process control systems generate time-critical, periodic, and time-available data. These data share the bandwidth of one fieldbus network medium. This paper reviews a bandwidth allocation scheme (BAS) that is applicable to many different kinds of field-buses. The BAS satisfies the real-time transmission requirements of time-critical and periodic data, and fully utilizes the bandwidth resources of the fieldbus network. The basic concept of the BAS is introduced and its implementation in Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus, and CAN protocols is discussed.

An Approach to Remote Monitoring and Control based on OPC Connectivity

Due to the advent of smart field devices in industrial automation, information on these devices can permeate throughout the plant and business management. With different protocols to connect the fieldbus protocols such as DeviceNet, ControlNet, and PROFIBUS to the Internet, there is no common platform to develop applications for these fieldbus protocols. This paper presents an OPC connectivity-based approach to remote monitoring and control. The proposed approach is integrated services to access real-time and history data from distributed control systems (DCSs) with the utilization of the OPC technology and XML to enterprise applications. The experimental results are presented, indicating that the performance of the proposed system is feasible for deploying to real automation system applications.

Hybrid Wired/Wireless PROFIBUS Timing Analysis Under Transient Faults

Fieldbus networks, as a part of distributed control applications, are subjected to harsh environments that may cause different faulty conditions. This is more pronounced in the case of hybrid wired/wireless networks because of the high susceptibility of wireless communication to such an environment. PROFIBUS as one of the widely applied fieldbus protocols is considered here. Consequently, a timing analysis for hybrid wired/wireless PROFIBUS networks under a bounded error model is proposed. In this context, two alternatives for Hybrid Wired/Wireless - Multiple Logical Rings (MLR) - are discussed on the base of a single PROFIBUS network - the Single Logical Ring (SLR) - analysis. This work is essential to assess the real-time behaviour of such a PROFIBUS network under the incidence of errors.

Communication conundrum [industrial Ethernet

There is increasing pressure on manufacturers in all sectors of industry to improve processes, reduce costs and boost productivity. Ethernet technology has been hailed as the key to achieving all these goals, and to boosting companies' competitiveness on increasingly aggressive global markets. The move to Industrial Ethernet has been rapid across all sectors of industry, and represents a step change from the standardisation on the various open and proprietary fieldbus protocols that was seen during the 1990s. Industrial Ethernet, in essence, is the use of Ethernet as the data link layer protocol in the OSI seven-layer model, with a fieldbus protocol as the application layer. This is conceptually similar to the various fieldbus options that are actually the use of RS232/485 as the data link layer, with the fieldbus protocol itself at the application layer.

Transmission of a Scheduled Message Using a Foundation Fieldbus Protocol

In the last decade, process instrumentation field devices such as sensors and actuators that have a direct contact with industrial processes have become increasingly intelligent. An important property of such intelligent field devices is their ability to be networked. The Foundation fieldbus (FF) is one of the most widely used fieldbus protocols for process instrumentation and control systems applications. This paper presents a study that validates the effectiveness of a new scheduling method that satisfies the performance requirements for a scheduled message using an FF protocol. Our scheduling method generates a schedule list that records the scheduled starting time and the scheduled period of each scheduled message. Then, it allocates scheduled message traffic to a bandwidth-limited fieldbus medium. As part of this study, an experimental model of an FF network was developed. The experimental results from our model confirmed that our scheduling method restricts the delay of a scheduled message to a prespecified bound.

철도 신호 시스템을 위한 고장 허용 스위치드 이더넷 구조의 성능 평가

In high reliability systems for industrial network such as railway signal system, fieldbus protocols have been known to satisfy the real-time and fault tolerant requirements. But, the application of fieldbus has been limited due to the high cost of hardware and software, and the difficulty in interfacing with multi-vendor products. Therefore, as an alternative to fieldbus, the computer network technology, especially Ethernet(IEEE 802.3), is being adapted to the industrial network. In this paper, we propose a switched Ethernet based railway signal system because of its very promising prospect for industrial application due to the elimination of uncertainties in the network operation. In addition, we propose the redundancy architecture for the reliability of network components. More specifically, this paper presents an analytical performance evaluation of switched Ethernet for railway signal system, and shows experimental evaluation of redundancy architecture.