Firmware Update Research Articles

New acquisition method based on firmware update protocols for Android smartphones

Android remains the dominant OS in the smartphone market even though the iOS share of the market increased during the iPhone 6 release period. As various types of Android smartphones are being launched in the market, forensic studies are being conducted to test data acquisition and analysis. However, since the application of new Android security technologies, it has become more difficult to acquire data using existing forensic methods. In order to address this problem, we propose a new acquisition method based on analyzing the firmware update protocols of Android smartphones. A physical acquisition of Android smartphones can be achieved using the flash memory read command by reverse engineering the firmware update protocol in the bootloader. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to existing forensic methods in terms of the integrity guarantee, acquisition speed, and physical dump with screen-locked smartphones (USB debugging disabled).

PCI express hotplug implementation for ATCA based instrumentation

This paper describes a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) hotplug and hotswap capability implementation for advanced telecommunication computer architecture (ATCA) based instrumentation. PCIe hotplug provides card insertion and removal capability from a running PCIe-based platform without causing system damages and not requiring an entire system shutdown. PCIe hotswap allows endpoints or PCIe switches with endpoint cards to be inserted or removed from a PCIe system gracefully or unexpectedly without special considerations. Control and data acquisition (C&DAQ) cards need to be replaced from a system for fault-condition repair, hardware malfunction, firmware updates or upgrades and hardware reconfiguration. ATCA specification key features such as high reliability and high availability for C&DAQ systems strongly benefits from these capabilities taking advantage from Redhat Enterprise Linux, installed operating system, and corresponding kernel with built-in mechanisms and embedded software modules for hotplug and hotswap support. PCIe hotplug and hotswap implemented solutions in the ATCA-based prototype provides described capabilities to the C&DAQ and PCIe switch cards providing a fast replacement strategy for damaged cards and system downtime reduction. In addition, provides capability to automatically remove PCIe device nodes and corresponding device files from ATCA system as expected by ITER.

Reliable Machine-to-Machine Multicast Services with Multi-Radio Cooperative Retransmissions

The 3GPP is working towards the definition of service requirements and technical solutions to provide support for energy-efficient Machine Type Communications (MTC) in the forthcoming generations of cellular networks. One of the envisioned solutions consists in applying group management policies to clusters of devices in order to reduce control signaling and improve upon energy efficiency, e.g., multicast Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates. In this paper, a Multi-Radio Cooperative Retransmission Scheme is proposed to efficiently carry out multicast transmissions in MTC networks, reducing both control signaling and improving energy-efficiency. The proposal can be executed in networks composed by devices equipped with multiple radio interfaces which enable them to connect to both a cellular access network, e.g., LTE, and a short-range MTC area network, e.g., Low-Power Wi-Fi or ZigBee, as foreseen by the MTC architecture defined by ETSI. The main idea is to carry out retransmissions over the M2M area network upon error in the main cellular link. This yields a reduction in both the traffic load over the cellular link and the energy consumption of the devices. Computer-based simulations with ns-3 have been conducted to analyze the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of energy consumption and assess its superior performance compared to non-cooperative retransmission schemes, thus validating its suitability for energy-constrained MTC applications.

공장 및 생산 자동화에 있어 안드로이드 기반의 보안성이 강화된 모바일장비관리시스템 구현

안드로이드 기반의 스마트폰을 공장자동화 및 생산자동화 분야에서의 활용이 중요하게 여겨지고 있다. 일반적으로 OMA DM 표준은 공장자동화 및 생산자동화 환경을 위한 중요한 인프라 구조 기술이다. 본 논문에서는 OMA DM 플랫폼 설계 및 구현에 대해 연구한다. 개발된 프로토타입은 세 가지 모듈 즉 DMS, FUMO 그리고 SCOMO로 구성된다. 그리고 EAP 및 AES 개념을 응용한 보안 모듈도 제시되었다. 제안된 보안 모듈은 공장자동화를 위해 안드로이드 기반의 스마트폰을 활용한 DMS, FUMO 및 SCOMO 모듈 간 통신에서 안전한 통신을 보장하기 위해 적용된다. 시뮬레이션 결과에 의하면 구현된 해당 프로토타입은 공장자동화 환경에서 좋은 성능을 보이며 보안성을 보장하면서 여러 공장자동화, 생산자동화 및 사무자동화 환경에서 활용이 가능하다. Utilizing smart phones based on android applications in the field of FA(Factory Automation) or PA(Production Automation) is being deployed actively. In general, MDM(Mobile Device Management) is a crucial infra-structure to build such a FA or PA environment. In this paper, we suggest an open mobile device management platform and implement its prototype. The developed prototype consists of three modules such as DMS(Device Management Server), FUMO(Firmware Update Management Object) and SCOMO(Software Component Management Object). In addition, we suggest a security module based on the concept of the EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) and the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). The suggested security module's prototype is applied to guarantee the data integrity in the process of communicating among DMS, FUMO and SCOMO for the purpose of utilizing smart phones based on android applications in a FA field. We also evaluate the performance of the implemented security prototype. According to our simulation results, the implemented prototype has a good performance in a FA environment and can be utilized in the other FA, PA or OA(Office Automation) environment with guaranteeing the security.

FOTA 기반 지능형 자동차를 위한 범용 ECU 시뮬레이터 설계 및 구현

This paper presents the design and development of ECU simulator in order to verify automatic firmware update system of ECU SW on the vehicle. We designed and developed general-proposed ECU simulator as devide into HW and SW parts. HWadopt 32bit MPU, CAN, LIN, LCD, and touch-pad button to satisfy general-proposed ECU level. And SW constructed as finite-state-machine structure in order to support HW spec. We developed ECU manager which deliveries update data to verify validity of operation. And we tested ECU simulator with ECU manager. For test of validity of ECU simulator, we set 4 scenarios between ECU simulator and manager. As the result, we confirmed validity of operation in ECU simulator for automatic SW update system.

Robotic Surgery Systems

For many people, the term “robotic surgery” likely evokes one of two images. One is Asimo, the Honda robot, performing a complex heart-valve replacement with the precision and finesse of the most skilled surgeon. The other is more along the lines of an industrial robot found welding on an automotive assembly line—performing surgery by rote programming on scores of patients in a row, just like in a factory. Neither is the case. Robotic surgery is, by some accounts, the next level of minimally invasive surgery. Conventional invasive surgery involves a large incision in the body to gain access to the area and organ of interest. For example, in a conventional gallbladder removal, the surgeon first performs a laparotomy, which is an incision, usually a large one, through the abdominal wall to gain access to the interior of the torso. The problem with a laparotomy is that it is very stressful physiologically and exposes large portions of the patient’s abdominal cavity to infection. Additionally, because the incision is so large, and the surgeon needs access to a large part of the patient’s interior, the surgery is characterized by a relatively large amount of trauma to the surrounding tissue, blood loss, and postoperative pain and discomfort coupled with a prolonged healing period. To overcome the problems and side effects of the laparotomy, minimally invasive surgery was developed. Minimally invasive surgery accesses the chest or abdomen through several smaller incisions, each one typically half an inch long. Each smaller incision has a port, or a combination trocar/port is used to make the incision, to protect the surrounding tissue while a particular device is inserted through the hole. The most common items inserted are an endoscope connected to a camera, a light source (which may be part of the other devices), an insufflator, and an instrument with one or more operating channels. In the case of minimally invasive gallbladder removal, now called a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, all the associated steps (draining the gall bladder, severing it from the ducts, and removing the empty bladder) are performed through the operating channel using specially adapted instruments. In minimally invasive surgery, as few as three or four small incisions can take the place of the much larger laparotomy incision. Some surgeons also perform this procedure as “scarless surgery” by accessing the abdomen through the navel and using a specialized operating endoscope with integral illumination and operating channels. Although there technically is a scar, observers might be hard pressed to find it as it is hidden in the folds of the navel. As one would expect, the smaller incisions mean less trauma to the body as a whole, reduced blood loss, and minimal discomfort, all of which equate to a shorter healing period. Minimally invasive surgery techniques are THE FUNDAMENTALS OF ...

Seeeduinoboot: an Advanced Bootloader for Seeeduino Stalker v2 Platforms, Allowing Remote Firmware Update

For Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), where the network devices could be deployed into a large space area, updating directly the firmware application becomes usually complicated or even impossible. A remote solution is absolutely necessary. It decreases the maintenance time and it reduces the cost of the implementation. We have already proposed an implementation of the network device using the Seeeduino Stalker v2.1 platform, as processing unit, and XBee Series 2 module, as wireless communication unit. To implement the remote firmware update functionality it was necessary to modify the existent bootloader application, by adding the possibility of processing the XBee communication telegrams and direct operations on device memory. The new bootloader application, called Seeeduinoboot, has been developed starting from an existing open source version, Optiboot 4.4.

Design of a Backup IED for IEC 61850-Based Substation

The IEC 61850-based substation automation system (SAS) provides opportunities for a new level of substation operation, enhancing operating efficiency and protection reliability with a new environment based on an Ethernet-based communication network and high-performance intelligent electronic devices (IEDs). With these changes, importance and dependence on IEDs are increasing rapidly in IEC 61850-based substations. While consideration of protection device faults has so far been infrequent, IED faults will become increasingly important in the future. Thus, this paper proposes a design of a backup IED for protection IED faults in IEC 61850-based substations. The proposed backup IED can be remotely converted into any type of protection IED without IED exchange, firmware update, or field control. The backup IED was designed through SCL engineering and file transfer functions in IEC 61850 and implemented by Windows programming with a commercially available IEC 61850 library.

Metrics for Assessing the Reliability of a Telemedicine Remote Monitoring System

The goal of this study was to assess using new metrics the reliability of a real-time health monitoring system in homes of older adults. The "MobileCare Monitor" system was installed into the homes of nine older adults >75 years of age for a 2-week period. The system consisted of a wireless wristwatch-based monitoring system containing sensors for location, temperature, and impacts and a "panic" button that was connected through a mesh network to third-party wireless devices (blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, weight scale, and a survey-administering device). To assess system reliability, daily phone calls instructed participants to conduct system tests and reminded them to fill out surveys and daily diaries. Phone reports and participant diary entries were checked against data received at a secure server. Reliability metrics assessed overall system reliability, data concurrence, study effectiveness, and system usability. Except for the pulse oximeter, system reliability metrics varied between 73% and 92%. Data concurrence for proximal and distal readings exceeded 88%. System usability following the pulse oximeter firmware update varied between 82% and 97%. An estimate of watch-wearing adherence within the home was quite high, about 80%, although given the inability to assess watch-wearing when a participant left the house, adherence likely exceeded the 10 h/day requested time. In total, 3,436 of 3,906 potential measurements were obtained, indicating a study effectiveness of 88%. The system was quite effective in providing accurate remote health data. The different system reliability measures identify important error sources in remote monitoring systems.

GLONASS ambiguity resolution of mixed receiver types without external calibration

GLONASS processing from mixed receiver types is typically subject to unmodeled inter-frequency phase biases which prevent carrier phase ambiguity parameters from converging to integers. Receiver-dependent values have been proposed to mitigate the contribution of these biases, but are still subject to a number of issues, such as firmware updates. Recent studies have demonstrated that the origin of inter-frequency biases is a misalignment between phase and code observations, and could be calibrated to first order by manufacturers. In this contribution, a calibration-free method for GLONASS ambiguity resolution is presented in which ambiguities naturally converge to integers. A mandatory condition is that two GLONASS satellites with adjacent frequency numbers are observed simultaneously, although this condition can be relaxed once a fixed solution has been obtained. This approach then permits the integration of different receiver types and firmware versions into seamless processing.

Electricity consumption and energy savings potential of video game consoles in the United States

Total energy consumption of video game consoles has grown rapidly in the past few decades due to rapid increases in market penetration, power consumption of the devices, and increasing usage driven by new capabilities. Unfortunately, studies investigating the energy impacts of these devices have been limited and potential responses, such as ENERGY STAR requirements, have been difficult to define and implement. We estimate that the total electricity consumption of video game consoles in the US was around 11 TWh in 2007 and 16 TWh in 2010 (approximately 1 % of US residential electricity consumption), an increase of almost 50 % in 3 years. However, any estimate of total game console energy consumption is highly uncertain, and we have determined that the key uncertainty is the unknown consumer behavior with regards to powering down the system after use. Even under this uncertainty, we demonstrate that the most effective energy-saving modification is incorporation of a default auto power down feature, which could reduce electricity consumption of game consoles by 75 % (10 TWh reduction of electricity in 2010), saving consumers over $1 billion annually in electricity bills. We conclude that using an auto power down feature for game consoles is at least as effective for reducing energy consumption as implementing a strict set of energy efficiency improvements for the devices, is much easier to implement given the nature of the video game console industry, and could be applied retroactively to currently deployed consoles through firmware updates.

Remote reprogramming of FPGAs on the CMS ECAL off detector electronics

This paper presents the design and implementation of a system for remote reconfiguration and reprogramming of the FPGAs in the off-detector electronics of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL) of the CMS detector.The main benefits of this system are: the reduced time needed to reprogram the FPGAs firmware; the increased mechanical safety avoiding hardware manipulations when the update is performed; and the possibility of performing the firmware update in several boards in parallel.The access to the ECAL off-detector boards makes use of the Module Test and Maintenance (MTM) bus existing on the VME64X crates. The JTAG Distribution Board (JDB) board is the central unit of this system. The functionality and implementation of the system, as well as the corresponding software tools, are described in this paper.

Personalization and Adaptation to the Medium and Context in a Fall Detection System

The main objective of this paper is to present a distributed processing architecture that explicitly integrates capabilities for its continuous adaptation to the medium, the context, and the user. This architecture is applied to a falling detection system through: 1) an optimization module that finds the optimal operation parameters for the detection algorithms of the system devices; 2) a distributed processing architecture that provides capabilities for remote firmware update of the smart sensors. The smart sensor also provides an estimation of activities of daily living (ADL), which results very useful in monitoring of the elderly and patients with chronic diseases. The developed experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of the system and specifically, the accuracy of the proposed algorithms and procedures (100% success for impact detection, 100% sensitivity and 95.68% specificity rates for fall detection, and 100% success for ADL level classification). Although the experiments have been developed with a cohort of young volunteers, the personalization and adaption mechanisms of the proposed architecture related to the concepts of "design for all" and "design space" will significantly ease the adaptation of the system for its application to the elderly.

Wireless sensor networks for indoor air quality monitoring

The purpose of this study is to build an indoor air quality monitoring system based on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technology. The main functions of the system include (1) remote parameter adjustment and firmware update mechanism for the sensors to enhance the flexibility and convenience of the system, (2) sensor nodes are designed by referring to the IEEE 1451.4 standard. This way, sensor nodes can automatically adjust and be plug and play, and (3) calibration method to strength the measurement value's sensitivity and accuracy. The experimental results show that transmission speed improves 30% than Trickle, transmission volume reduced to 42% of the original volume, updating task in 5*5 network topology can be executed 1.79 times and power consumption reduced to 30%. When baseline drifts, we can use the firmware update mechanism to adjust the reference value. The way can reduce error percentage from 15% to 7%.

Design and Implementation of a Firmware Update Protocol for Resource Constrained Wireless Sensor Networks

Resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) require an automated firmware updating protocol for adding new features or error fixes. Reprogramming nodes manually is often impractical or even impossible. Current update protocols require a large external memory or external WSN transport protocol. This paper presents the design, implementation, and experiments of a Program Image Dissemination Protocol (PIDP) for autonomous WSNs. It is reliable, lightweight and it supports multi-hopping. PIDP does not require external memory, is independent of the WSN implementation, transfers firmware, and reprograms the whole program image. It was implemented on a node platform with an 8-bit microcontroller and a 2.4 GHz radio. Implementation requires 22 bytes of data memory and less than 7 kilobytes of program memory. PIDP updates 178 nodes within 5 hours. One update consumes under 1‰ of the energy of two AA batteries.

1A1-H03 RTC-CANopenにおけるファームウェアデータベースの開発(次世代ロボット知能化技術開発プロジェクト)

In this research, we design firmware database for the firmware update to apply RTC-CANopen. This is a part of the firmware update-function of the device used in the RTC-CANopen system. These systems update application automatically without user action at the firmware update for CANopen devices. In this paper, we were to design of the Firmware database and to how to get to FW. In addition, we have designed in the system How to check FW data. Using the prototype system was evaluated in a validation based on experiments performed.

Energy-Efficient Progressive Remote Update for Flash-Based Firmware of Networked Embedded Systems

Firmware update over a network connection is an essential but expensive feature for many embedded systems due to not only the relatively high power consumption and limited bandwidth, but also page-granular erasure before rewriting to flash memory. This work proposes a page-level, link-time technique that minimizes not only the size of patching scripts but also perturbation to the firmware memory, over the entire sequence of updates in the system’s lifetime. We propose a tool that first clusters functions to minimize caller-callee dependency across pages, and then orders the functions within each page to minimize intrapage perturbation. Experimental results show our technique to reduce the energy consumption of firmware update by 30--42% over the state-of-the-art. Most importantly, this is the first work that has ever shown to evolve well over 41 revisions of a real-world open-source real-time operating system.

Secure Rateless Deluge: Pollution-Resistant Reprogramming and Data Dissemination for Wireless Sensor Networks

A network reprogramming protocol is made for updating the firmware of a wireless sensor network (WSN) in situ. For security reasons, every firmware update must be authenticated to prevent an attacker from installing its code in the network.While existing schemes can provide authentication services, they are insufficient for a new generation of network coding-based reprogramming protocols like Rateless Deluge. We propose Secure Rateless Deluge or Sreluge, a secure version of Rateless Deluge that is resistant to pollution attacks (denial-of-service attacks aimed at polluting encoded packets). Sreluge employs a neighbor classification system and a time series forecasting technique to isolate polluters, and a combinatorial technique to decode data packets in the presence of polluters before the isolation is complete. For detecting polluters, Sreluge has zero false negative rate and a negligible false positive rate. TOSSIM simulations and experimental results show that Sreluge is practical.

2A2-B23 RTC-CANopenにおけるファームウェアアップデートシステムの設計

In this paper, we propose the design of firmware (FW) update system for RTC-CANopen, including system structure and FW update algorithm. Although RT-Middleware such as OpenRTM-aist enables software modules developed as RT-Component to easily communicate with each other, OpenRTM-aist requires high performance CPU and CORBA environment. Many robots and devices for robots are controlled by embedded MPUs. Therefore, we developed RTC-CANopen that is the RT-Middleware for embedded system. RTC-CANopen enables embedded system and robotic systems to use CANopen device easily. We developed update algorithm based on CANopen software update standard. Therefore, our proposed system is able to support standard CANopen devices. By accomplishing our research, we can easily maintain the FW of embedded system as well as robotic system adopting RTC-CANopen.

양방향 통신을 지원하는 시분할 기반 선형 무선 센서 네트워크를 위한 원격 펌웨어 업데이트 방법

A wireless sensor network inherently comprises a plurality of sensor nodes widely deployed for sensing environmental information. To add new functions or to correct some faulty functions of an existing wireless sensor network, the firmware for each sensor node needs to be updated. Firmware update would be quite troublesome if it requires the gathering, reprogramming, and redeploy of all of already deployed sensor nodes. Over-the-air programming (OTA) facilitates the firmware update process, thereby allowing convenient maintenance of an already-deployed sensor network. This paper proposes and implements a remote firmware update mechanism for a TDMA-based wireless sensor network, in which the firmware for sensor nodes constituting the TDMA-based sensor network can be easily updated and the update process can be conveniently monitored from a remote site. We verify the validity of the proposed firmware update method via experiments and introduce three wireless sensor networks installed in outdoor sites in which the proposed firmware update mechanism has been exploited.