Multiple Communication Protocols Research Articles

Practical Implementation of Multithreaded Communication Protocols in Modern Protection Relays

Microprocessor-based protection relays that provide reliable and fast responses to abnormal conditions are of paramount importance to electrical grids. Modern numerical relays constitute communication protocols to facilitate data exchange among protection devices. Though it has become an integral part of electrical substation devices, there has not been any significant article that puts forth a detailed description of the preemptive multithreading implementation of multiple communication protocols for protection relays. Hence, this article is aimed at designing a preemptive multithreading system comprising IEC 61850 Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS), Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE), and Sampled Values (SV) along with Modbus TCP/IP and IEC 60870-5-104 communication protocols for protection relays. Latest products from prominent manufacturers of protection relays adopt preemptive multithreading on a real-time Linux operating system. In this work, the designed multi-protocol communication system is implemented on a real-time embedded Linux-based cortex-A7 core of the STM32MP157D-DK1 device. The designed system is verified by conducting an interoperability test with ABB REF615 and Thytronic NA11 protection relays.

Distributed Fixed-Time Energy Management for Port Microgrid Considering Transmissive Efficiency

To enhance the efficiency of a port microgrid, this paper proposes an energy management method and a topology construction mechanism considering the convergence rate and information transmission distances, respectively. Firstly, a distributed fixed-time energy management method is proposed to solve an energy management problem in a known time and guarantee the efficiency of the port microgrid. Secondly, to address the challenge of heterogeneous devices with multiple communication protocols, information exchange between different devices is facilitated through a polymorphic network. To obtain a connected communication topology that can ensure the implementation of the distributed energy management method, a connected networking mechanism is proposed. This mechanism minimizes the total communication distance to reduce the effect of the information transmission distance on communication effectiveness. Finally, the effectiveness of both algorithms is demonstrated by simulation, and the advantages of the distributed fixed-time energy management method on the convergence rate are reflected through a comparison with other methods.

Design of Fault-Tolerant Automotive Gateway Architecture Using MC9S12XDP512 Microcontroller Device

The increasing number of electrical components and sensors in modern vehicles makes network design more challenging. The development of automotive electronics through multiple communication protocols brings out the importance of a hybrid network that is both optimal and fault-tolerant. In order for a vehicle to communicate with electronic components like engine management systems, stability control units, braking systems, and door functions, a CAN (controller area network) is developed. In order to create a hierarchical vehicle network gateway for quality fortification and cost reduction of vehicles, the CAN and LIN (local interconnect network) are considered. This standardisation will reduce the variety of low-end multiplex solutions currently available for automotive electronics’ development costs, production rates, service fees, and logistics costs. The implementation of a gateway in these electronic devices is made possible with the proposed hybrid architecture. This system effectively shows the high-speed and low-speed applications relevant to crucial ECUs in the network by using two distinct CAN and LIN gateways to send sensor data between the ECUs (electronic control units).

Intelligent Embedded Systems Platform for Vehicular Cyber-Physical Systems

Intelligent vehicular cyber-physical systems (ICPSs) increase the reliability, efficiency and adaptability of urban mobility systems. Notably, ICPSs enable autonomous transportation in smart cities, exemplified by the emerging fields of self-driving cars and advanced air mobility. Nonetheless, the deployment of ICPSs raises legitimate concerns surrounding safety assurance, cybersecurity threats, communication reliability, and data management. Addressing these issues often necessitates specialised platforms to cater to the heterogeneity and complexity of ICPSs. To address this challenge, this paper presents a comprehensive CPS to explore, develop and test ICPSs and intelligent vehicular algorithms. A customisable embedded system is realised using a field programmable gate array, which is connected to a supervisory computer to enable networked operations and support advanced multi-agent algorithms. The platform remains compatible with multiple vehicular sensors, communication protocols and human–machine interfaces, essential for a vehicle to perceive its surroundings, communicate with collaborative systems, and interact with its occupants. The proposed CPS thereby offers a practical resource to advance ICPS development, comprehension, and experimentation in both educational and research settings. By bridging the gap between theory and practice, this tool empowers users to overcome the complexities of ICPSs and contribute to the emerging fields of autonomous transportation and intelligent vehicular systems.

A novel multiple access communication protocol for LoRa networks without LoraWAN

Current <span>studies predict there will be approximately 75 billion internet of things (IoT) devices connected to the internet by 2025. Such enormous IoT networks will require efficient communications systems to support those networks running well. We consider one of the emerging communications technologies that is widely used for wireless wide-area network, i.e., long range (LoRa). By default, LoRa wide area networking (LoRaWAN) has been equipped with a medium access control (MAC) protocol, however, several studies showed that LoRaWAN might not be the most excellent choice for certain applications of low-power wide area network, for example, peer-to-peer and mesh networks. In this work, we propose an application layer LoRa multi-communication (LMC) protocol to resolve multiple access problems in LoRa networks without employing LoRaWAN. The algorithm was embedded and tested on energy-constraint devices as building blocks of most IoT systems. Our examination in a controlled environment showed that the proposed algorithm achieved 94% averaged packet reception ratio (PRR) and 33.3 hours longer averaged battery lifetime compared to the default operation (without LMC algorithm) of LoRa networks. The proposed algorithm also introduced longer averaged time on air (ToA) compared to the default LoRa network mainly due to its best-effort service scenario applied to the proposed algorithm.</span>

Industrial CIP Network and Monitoring System with Multiple Communication Protocols Between Allen Bradley Equipment

Industrial CIP Network and Monitoring System with Multiple Communication Protocols Between Allen Bradley Equipment

New Multipriority and Variable Duration Triple Time Slot P-CSMA Protocol for Edge Servers Server Deployment

In this paper, we study the joint impact of task priority and transmission time slot variable computing services on a novel p-persistent random multiple access communication protocol (p-persistent CSMA) in an edge server network. The traditional p-persistent CSMA protocol performs better at low loads, and in order to make the protocol perform better even when the edge server network is accessed by a large number of smart terminals, we consider adding a variable success time slot length and a multichannel, multipriority access model. When the success time slot is longer, the nodes will take longer time to send data, which will reduce the number of nodes retransmitting data, thus improving channel utilization and making the throughput rate of the network increase accordingly. Then, different priority levels are assigned according to the user’s needs, and the higher the priority level, the more channels are occupied and the probability of successful message delivery increases. Finally, the superiority of the proposed protocol is verified by simulation.

English

Human health, well-being, and comfort correlate directly with an interior environment. As a result, indoor climate control and monitoring are commonplace in a variety of settings, including homes and public buildings. Our prior studies have demonstrated that an active talking plant pot system may efficiently lower particulate matter and volatile organic compound concentrations while stabilising carbon dioxide levels in an indoor setting. The real-time monitoring of plant health has gained significant attention related to the indoor environment. In this study, we have proposed a system with Wi-Fi & mobile application to monitor pot plant health using in the indoor environment. We have developed customised hardware with multiple sensors and communication protocols to realise the proposed system. Further, this hardware is deployed in the plant pot with sensors to log sensor values on cloud server-based web and mobile applications. This study is used to propose a system for monitoring the health of plants and indoor climates. This also helps those who do not have time to water the plant also.

A 0.2–7.1-Gb/s Low-Jitter Full-Rate Reference-Less CDR for Communication Signal Analyzers

For the measurement of high-speed communication signals, whether it is to check the signal’s bit error rate with a bit error rate tester or to record the signal’s eye diagram with an equivalent-time oscilloscope, a clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit is required to generate a trigger signal properly aligned to the input data signal. For the system under test where multiple communication protocols coexist, a wide operation frequency range and low jitter CDR circuit can undoubtedly improve the measurement efficiency and reduce the cost. However, obtaining broad frequency coverage and minimal recovery clock jitter simultaneously has always been a challenge in the design of CDR circuits. This paper proposes a CDR circuit combining a multi-band LC-VCO and a configurable frequency divider, which effectively expands the operating frequency range of the CDR while maintaining the low jitter of the recovered clock. A 0.2-7.1-Gb/s CDR circuits with a 1.9-ps RMS jitter of the recovered clock under a 7.1-Gb/s input PRBS signal is implemented in 65 nm CMOS. Compared with other LC-VCO based CDRs, the proposed CDR achieves better energy efficiency and lower jitter performance.

A framework for researching energy optimization of factory operations

Energy optimization of factory operations has gained increasing importance over recent years since it is understood as one way to counteract climate change. At the same time, the number of research teams working on energy-optimized factory operations has also increased. While many tools are useful in this area, our team has recognized the importance of a comprehensive framework to combine functionality for optimization, simulation, and communication with devices in the factory. Therefore, we developed a framework that provides a standardized interface to research energy-optimized factory operations with a rolling horizon approach. The optimization part of the framework is based on the OpenAI gym environment. The framework also provides connectors for multiple communication protocols including Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture and Modbus via Transmission Control Protocol. These facilities can be utilized to implement rolling horizon optimizations for factory systems easily and directly control devices in the factory with the optimization results. In this article, we present the framework and show some examples to prove the effectiveness of our approach.

An On-Demand TDMA Approach Optimized for Low-Latency IoT Applications.

The never-ending evolution of the Internet of Things ecosystem is reshaping the arena of wireless communications and competing against conventional networking solutions in fields such as battery life, device and deployment cost, coverage, and support for an immense number of devices. Inspired by this phenomenon, this paper presents a novel Medium Access Control protocol utilizing long-range technology, based on a Time Division Multiple Access communication protocol variant, adjusted to make better use of each device’s hardware. Focusing on Low Power Wide Area Network applications, this implementation improves data latency and offers amplified performance due to better network awareness and dynamic time slot rescheduling. Various simulation scenarios were contrived to evaluate the protocol’s performance. The results instate the proposed algorithm as a promising access scheme for the IoT field.

Health monitoring of a conveyor belt system using machine vision and real-time sensor data

To truly achieve prognostic health monitoring of complex manufacturing systems, real-time data from multiple sensors must be continuously monitored in order to have a system-wide view of the health of the machine and the effect of different operating conditions on system performance. Belt misalignment is a critical factor in the conveyor belt system traditionally assessed through mechanical means. This research successfully implements multiple sensors and communication protocols along with machine vision for monitoring the health of a conveyor belt system. Data is captured using industrial-grade sensors and conditioned in a PLC. This information is sent to a wireless radio frequency module that transmits wirelessly to a remote receiver paired to an IoT gateway. Images taken by a camera are simultaneously processed by a local computer running a machine vision algorithm used to establish if the conveyor belt is operating normally. Both the sensor data and the machine vision information are sent to the cloud for remote users to monitor the system's operating conditions and to detect potential failure prior to its occurrence. The system communicates using a set of Radio Frequency modules, Zumlink™, and the range of this system was tested and determined to be greater than 2.5 miles with obstructions typical in a manufacturing environment.

Stability and Accuracy Analysis of a Distributed Digital Real-Time Cosimulation Infrastructure

Cosimulation techniques are gaining popularity amongst the power system research community to analyze future scalable smart grid solutions. However, complications such as multiple communication protocols, uncertainty in latencies are holding up the widespread usage of these techniques for the power system analysis. These issues are even further exacerbated when applied to digital real-time simulators (DRTSs) with strict real-time constraints for power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) tests. In this article, we present an innovative digital real-time cosimulation infrastructure that allows interconnecting different DRTS through the Aurora 8B/10B protocol to reduce the effects of communication latency and respect real-time constraints. The proposed solution synchronizes the DRTS interconnection by means of the IEEE 1588 precision time protocol (PTP) standard to align executions and results obtained by the cosimulated scenario. The ideal transformer method interface algorithm, commonly used in PHIL applications, is used to interface the DRTS. Finally, we present time-domain and frequency-domain accuracy analyzes on the obtained experimental results to demonstrate the potential of the proposed infrastructure. With the presented setup, a time step duration down to 50 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu$</tex-math></inline-formula> s is shown to be stable and accurate in running an electromagnetic transients cosimulated power grid scenario by interconnecting two commercial DRTS (i.e., RTDS NovaCor), extending the scalability of future smart grid real-time simulations.

Vacuum control system for the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility

The Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) is a ground simulation user facility for studying the space plasma physical processes. This study presents the design and construction of a vacuum control system for the SPERF to set up an appropriate vacuum environment for plasma experiments, including the terrestrial space and near space vacuum control systems. Based on the requirements of remote automation, distributed control, centralized management, high reliability, expansibility, and safety, the architecture of the vacuum control system has been divided into three levels. Among these, the local level is the most essential part of the control system, which adopts the programmable logical controller (PLC) with Siemens S7-1500 CPU as the core. The PLC supports multiple communication protocols and can accurately control and monitor the actuators in the process of establishing a vacuum environment. Furthermore, it has the ability to communicate and interact with remote upper computers and the central control system through the supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) software developed based on iFix. Based on the architecture of the vacuum control system, the control process for establishing the vacuum environment, including the ultimate vacuum and experimental vacuum, was designed. It is noteworthy that in experimental vacuum acquisition, the injection of working fluid gas is controlled directly by the central control system, considering the different requirements of the terrestrial space and near space systems for the experimental working pressure and flexibility of the experimental vacuum control. The vacuum control system designed in this study provides technical support for the SPERF to perform the plasma experiments successfully. In addition, it offers reference and insights for the design of vacuum control systems in similar large-scale plasma simulation facilities.

ViTool-BC: Visualization Tool Based on Cooja Simulator for WSN

Evaluation and monitoring of wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the parameters defining their operations and design, such as energy consumption, latency, and stability, is a complex task due to interaction with real devices. For greater control of these variables, the use of simulators arises as an alternative. Cooja is a WSN simulator/emulator which handles the devices’ controllers and multiple communication protocol implementations, such as RPL (RPL is one of the most used protocol in IoT). However, Cooja does not consider either the implementation of an energy model (it has infinite energy consumption) nor the visual behavior of the topology construction, although these aspects are crucial for effective network analysis and decision taking. This paper presents the design and the implementation of ViTool-BC, a software built on top of Cooja, which allows the creation of different energy estimation models and also to visualize in real time the behavior of WSN topology construction. In addition, ViTool-BC offers a heat map of energy consumption traces. Therefore, this tool helps researchers to monitor in real time the topology construction, node disconnection, and battery depletion, aspects to be considered in the analysis of the available routing protocols in Cooja.

AnoML-IoT: An end to end re-configurable multi-protocol anomaly detection pipeline for Internet of Things

The rapid development in ubiquitous computing has enabled the use of microcontrollers as edge devices. These devices are used to develop truly distributed IoT-based mechanisms where machine learning (ML) models are utilized. However, integrating ML models to edge devices requires an understanding of various software tools such as programming languages and domain-specific knowledge. Anomaly detection is one of the domains where a high level of expertise is required to achieve promising results. In this work, we present AnoML which is an end-to-end data science pipeline that allows the integration of multiple wireless communication protocols, anomaly detection algorithms, deployment to the edge, fog, and cloud platforms with minimal user interaction. We facilitate the development of IoT anomaly detection mechanisms by reducing the barriers that are formed due to the heterogeneity of an IoT environment. The proposed pipeline supports four main phases: (i) data ingestion, (ii) model training, (iii) model deployment, (iv) inference and maintaining. We evaluate the pipeline with two anomaly detection datasets while comparing the efficiency of several machine learning algorithms within different nodes. We also provide the source code of the developed tools which are the main components of the pipeline.

Internet of Things and Long-Range-Based Smart Lampposts for Illuminating Smart Cities

Intelligent and resilient infrastructure is necessary for smart cities for contributing flexible and smart amenities to the citizens. Concerning the United Nations (UN) estimation, the global population residing in urban cities will reach 68% by 2050. Additionally, the Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAP) report suggests implementing energy efficiency technologies in smart cities to meet the rising urban population requirement. Internet of Things (IoT) technology empowers to achieve the goal of energy efficiency by integrating sensors, wireless technology, and renewable energy sources in the lighting system. At present, the IoT-based lighting system in urban cities is implemented with streetlamps and lampposts. In this study, we are focusing on lampposts, as it has the flexibility of establishing and implementing a multitude of applications on a single system. Due to technological advancement, the lamppost is embedded with multiple sensors, communication protocols, and energy distribution infrastructure for delivering smart and affordable amenities to the citizens residing in the smart cities. This motivates us to implement a smart lamppost that provides a multitude of applications such as smart light, digital signs, environmental monitoring conditions, electric vehicle (EV) charging port, wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) hotspot, etc., on a single lamppost. This study proposed the IoT-assisted fog and edge-based smart lamppost for the smart cities to realize the smart infrastructure. Further, this smart lamppost is integrated with low power and long-range communication, i.e., Long Range (LoRa), enabling the smart lamppost to communicate the sensory data to a long-range. Additionally, LoRa is integrated with a Wi-Fi module for establishing the interconnection between the smart lamppost and IoT server. Generally, the proposed architecture is broad perspective; however, we have developed and implemented the hardware models of three components including lighting system, environmental parameters and image sensing in real time. Lighting system and environmental parameter monitoring are integrated on same hardware model for sensing and logging the real-time values of temperature, humidity, CO and light intensity on the IoT server. The developed image sensing prototype based on ESP 32 controller is also evaluated in real-time scenarios, and the performance of the prototype is efficient. The proposed system delivers reliable performance in terms of sensing and communicating environmental parameters and images to the IoT server. Moreover, in future, we will complete the development of other components of the smart lamppost for enhancing the smarter infrastructure in smart cities.

The SAir-IIoT Cyber Testbed as a Service: A Novel Cybertwins Architecture in IIoT-Based Smart Airports

Rapid technological advancements have resulted in increasingly more efficient and lightweight devices that, coupled with low-power and wide-range wireless connectivity, have given rise to Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) systems. As a result, the concept of intelligent environments was developed, such as smart airports, where ubiquitous sensors seamlessly cooperate through several types of communication technologies, such as WiFi, BLE, ZigBEE and 5G, enable the collection of data and the dynamic adaption of the system to changing circumstances. However, along with certain benefits, such as augmented communication, enhanced business processes and improved efficiency, IIoT introduces new vulnerabilities, enabling cyber-attackers to compromise not only the digital infrastructure of IIoT architecture-enabled smart airports, but also affecting their physical assets. In this paper, we present a novel smart airport cybertwins security-oriented IIoT testbed, named SAir-IIoT, which comprises multiple heterogeneous IIoT devices and communication protocols, organised into distinct zones, automatically interconnected with each other, that can be remotely accessed as-a-service. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first cybertwins security-oriented testbed that enables researchers and practitioners to remotely practice attack and defence scenarios in smart airport IIoT environments. Additionally, we introduce a new data management technique for dynamically collecting, analysing and tagging heterogeneous data from diverse data sources including IIoT devices and network flows. Finally, we compare SAir-IIoT with other IIoT-based testbeds, revealing its complexity and effectiveness to evaluate new cyber security methods.

An integrated platform for managing information in smart cities

This article focuses on defining the integrated platform for managing information in smart cities. We look into the smart city platforms that are increasingly used in today’s cities all around the world. Smart city platforms can be deployed on private, public or hybrid clouds, remote servers or onsite. By definition, a smart city platform integrates many different functional areas of the smart city in a single environment. The Smart city platform offers integrated functionality to coordinate intelligent city data, applications, solutions and services at one or more operational levels between multiple stakeholders with integrated functionality. By monitoring and analysing the use of urban assets, the government can distribute them to improve operational efficiency. The platform provides middleware and operational functionality across multiple software and hardware, integrates multiple communication protocols, and provides latent and free solutions for smart cities. Managing the huge amounts of data generated by IoT-based sensors and systems is a main challenge facing end users and providers. We show that smart city platforms serve to standardize data and information across many silo systems. It is demonstrated that they provide a common mechanism for visualizing and managing data to optimize the entire urban operation.

Time-Bin and Polarization Superdense Teleportation for Space Applications

To build a global quantum communication network, low-transmission, fiber-based communication channels can be supplemented by using a free-space channel between a satellite and a ground station on Earth. We have constructed a system that generates hyperentangled photonic "ququarts" and measures them to execute multiple quantum communication protocols of interest. We have successfully executed and characterized superdense teleportation, a modified remote-state preparation protocol that transfers more quantum information than standard teleportation, for the same classical information cost, and moreover, is in principle deterministic. Our measurements show an average fidelity of $0.94\pm0.02$, with a phase resolution of $\sim7^{\circ}$, allowing reliable transmission of $>10^5$ distinguishable quantum states. Additionally, we have demonstrated the ability to compensate for the Doppler shift, which would otherwise prevent sending time-bin encoded states from a rapidly moving satellite, thus allowing the low-error execution of phase-sensitive protocols during an orbital pass. Finally, we show that the estimated number of received coincidence counts in a realistic implementation is sufficient to enable faithful reconstruction of the received state in a single pass.