Real-time Industrial Communication Research Articles

SCADA Communication Real Time Protocols

Objectives/Method: SCADA networks are crucial for industrial organizations, and play an important role in real time industrial communication. Today, with the fourth industrial revolution, infrastructures are increasingly connected to the corporate network and to Internet, which makes them more dependent on networks and communication protocols used. This connectivity can help optimize manufacturing and distribution processes while reducing costs, but it also exposes the industrial network to security issues. The purpose of this article is to describe the architecture of SCADA networks and present the most used SCADA communication protocols such as Modbus TCP, IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, ETHERCAT, SERCOS III, OPC AU, MQTT and SNMP, to provide a comparative study that allows us to choose the most appropriate protocol for industrial communication, especially in the context of Industry 4.0. Applications/Improvements: We have presented a comparative study to describe the most used SCADA communication protocols. We therefore present the archetecture of each protocol, the quality of service, the context of use, the security, the frame and other information that allow us to choose the most appropriate protocol to apply in the Industry 4.0. Findings: OPC UA is often considered as the next reference for industrial communications, it is a multi-level protocol that includes a security layer to indicate whether future communications will be signed, encrypted or in plain text.

A Dynamic Rate Selection Algorithm for IEEE 802.11 Industrial Wireless LAN

The multirate support feature has been introduced by the IEEE 802.11 standard to improve the system performance, and has been widely exploited by means of rate adaptation (RA) strategies within general purpose wireless LANs. These strategies revealed ineffective for real-time industrial communications, and alternative solutions, better tailored for such a specific field of application, were investigated. The preliminary outcomes of the analyses carried out were promising, even if they clearly indicated that further efforts were necessary. In this direction, this paper first proposes rate selection for industrial networks (RSIN), an innovative RA algorithm specifically conceived for the real-time industrial scenario with the goal of minimizing the transmission error probability, while taking into account the deadline imposed to packet delivery. Then, it describes the practical implementation of RSIN on commercial devices, along with that of other formerly introduced RA techniques. Finally, the paper presents a thorough performance analysis, carried out to investigate the behavior of the addressed RA schemes. Such an assessment was performed via both experimental campaigns and simulations. The obtained results, on one hand, confirm the effectiveness of the RA techniques purposely designed for real-time industrial communication. On the other hand, they clearly indicate that RSIN outperforms all the other strategies.

Modeling Distributed Real-Time Systems in TIOA and UPPAAL

The mission- and life-critical properties of distributed real-time systems require concurrent modeling, analysis, and formal verification in the design stage. The timed input/output automata (TIOA) framework and the UPPAAL software package are two widely used modeling and verification tools for this purpose. To this end, we develop the algorithm TUConvert for converting distributed TIOA models to UPPAAL behavioral models and formally prove its correctness. We demonstrate the applicability of our algorithm by the formal verification of a distributed real-time industrial communication protocol that is modeled by TIOA.

On the Use of IEEE 802.11n for Industrial Communications

In the last years, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs (WLANs) have proved their effectiveness for a wide range of real-time industrial communication applications. Nonetheless, the introduction of the important IEEE 802.11n amendment, which is commonly implemented in commercial devices, has not been adequately addressed in this operational framework yet. IEEE 802.11n encompasses several enhancements at both physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers that may bring considerable improvements to the performance of WLANs deployed in real-time industrial communication systems. To this regard, in this paper, we present a thorough investigation of the most important IEEE 802.11n features, addressing in particular, specific performance indicators such as timeliness and reliability, which are crucial for industrial communication systems. To this aim, after an accurate theoretical analysis, we implemented a suitable experimental setup and carried out several measurement sessions to obtain an exhaustive performance assessment. The outcomes of these experiments, on one hand, revealed that the adoption of IEEE 802.11n can actually provide significant improvements to the performance of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN in the industrial communication scenario. On the other hand, the assessment allowed to select, among the various options of IEEE 802.11n, the parameter settings which may ensure the best behavior in this specific (and demanding) field of application.

Strategies and Services for Energy Efficiency in Real-Time Ethernet Networks

The IEEE 802.3az amendment to the Ethernet standard, referred to as energy-efficient Ethernet (EEE), encompasses the new low power Idle operational mode that allows to strongly decrease the energy consumption of inactive links. The introduction of EEE in real-time industrial communications represents an interesting topic currently addressed by the scientific community, as well as by some standardization bodies. The outcomes of these activities are promising, since effective EEE strategies can be devised, and are able to cope with the very tight timing requirements of industrial communication. Unfortunately, the proposed analyses do not address implementation issues that, conversely, represent a crucial aspect in this scenario. Hence, in this paper, we specifically focus on practical issues concerned with the adoption of EEE strategies by real-time Ethernet (RTE) networks. At first, we address the use of commercially available network components and describe a measurement setup that can be adopted to achieve the adequate characterization of such components. Furthermore, we show that, in an RTE perspective, link activations/deactivations should be independently managed by suitably designed EEE strategies at the application level. Consequently, we defined a set of network services that have to be made available in the device drivers. Hence, we consider a generic RTE network and discuss methods for the practical implementation of those EEE strategies. A performance assessment carried out via theoretical models as well as numerical simulations shows that EEE strategies can be effectively implemented with considerable power savings at the expense of only minimal performance degradation.

A new MAC scheme specifically suited for real-time industrial communication based on IEEE 802.11e

This paper proposes a new real-time communication scheme for 802.11e wireless networks. This scheme is called Group Sequential Communication (GSC). The GSC improves the efficiency of the Hybrid Coordination Function Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) mechanism by reducing the protocol overheads of the 802.11e amendment. The GSC approach eliminates the polling scheme used in traditional scheduling algorithm, by means of a virtual token passing procedure among members of the real-time group to whom is granted a high-priority and sequential access to communication medium. In order to improve the reliability of the proposed scheme, it is also proposed an error recovery mechanism based on block acknowledgment. The GSC was implemented in network simulator software and the performance results were compared to HCCA scheme, showing the efficient of the proposed approach when dealing with traditional industrial communication scenarios.

Real-Time Industrial Communication over IEEE802.11e Wireless Local Area Networks

This paper proposes a real-time communication scheme for wireless local area network (WLAN) infrastructure. This strategy was called Group Sequential Communication (GSC). The GSC has the main goal to reduce the network overhead due to the Polling, Ack and QoS Null Frames of Hybrid Coordination Function Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) in IEEE 802.11e, because it uses a Virtual Token Passing procedure to priority the real-time communication over WLAN. In order to improve the confiability of the new scheme is presented a fault-tolerant mechanism based on Block-Ack strategy to avoid missing real-time messages. The GSC was implemented in NS2 and simulation results have proved the superior performance of GSC in comparison with HCCA for real-time industrial communications.

Performance evaluation of switched Ethernet for real-time industrial communications

The real-time industrial network, often referred to as fieldbus, is an important element for building automated manufacturing systems. Thus, in order to satisfy the real-time requirements of field devices such as sensors, actuators, and controllers, numerous standard organizations and vendors have developed various fieldbus protocols. As a result, the IEC 61158 standard, including Profibus, WorldFIP, and Foundation Fieldbus, was recently announced as an international standard. These fieldbus protocols have an important advantage over the widely used Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) in terms of the deterministic characteristics. However, the application of fieldbus has been limited due to the high cost of hardware and the difficulty in interfacing with multivendor products. In order to solve these problems, the computer network technology, especially Ethernet, is being adopted by the industrial automation field. The key technical obstacle for Ethernet for industrial applications is that its nondeterministic behavior makes it inadequate for real-time applications, where the frames containing real-time information, such as control command and alarm signal, have to be delivered within a certain time limit. Recently, the development of switched Ethernet shows a very promising prospect for industrial applications due to the elimination of uncertainties in the network operation that leads to the dramatically improved performance. This paper focuses on the application of the switched Ethernet for industrial communications. More specifically, this paper presents the performance evaluation of the switched Ethernet on an experimental network testbed along with an implementation method for using the switched Ethernet for industrial automation.

Industrial Multimedia over Factory-Floor information Networks

In this paper we describe a real-time industrial communication network able to support both control-related and multimedia traffic. The industrial communication network is based on the PROFIBUS standard, with multimedia capabilities. The TCP/IP suite of protocols, properly integrated within the PROFIBUS communication stack, supports these capabilities. From the timeliness point of view the challenge is two folded. On one hand the multimedia traffic should not interfere with the timing requirements of the ‘‘native‘’ control-related PROFIBUS traffic (typically hard real-time). On the other hand multimedia traffic requires certain levels of quality-of-service to be attained. Copyright © 2001 IFAC

Real-time fieldbus communications using Profibus networks

This paper provides a comprehensive study on how to use Profibus fieldbus networks to support real-time industrial communications, that is, on how to ensure the transmission of real-time messages within a maximum bound time. Profibus is base on a simplified timed token (TT) protocol, which is a well-proved solution for real-time communication systems. However, Profibus differs with respect to the TT protocol, thus preventing the application of the usual TT protocol real-time analysis. In fact, real-time solutions for networks based on the TT protocol rely on the possibility of allocating specific bandwidth for the real-time traffic. This means that a minimum amount of time is always available, at each token visit, to transmit real-time messages, transversely, with the Profibus protocol, in the worst case, only one real-time message is processed per token visit. The authors propose two approaches to guarantee the real-time behavior of the Profibus protocol: (1) an unconstrained low-priority traffic profile; and (2) a constrained low-priority traffic profile. The proposed analysis shows that the first profile is a suitable approach for more responsive systems (tighter deadlines), while the second allows for increased nonreal-time traffic throughput.

The design and analysis of low-cost real-time fieldbus systems

Extensively discussed for decades, it is only relatively recently that a demand for true real-time industrial communication systems has become evident. However, when the requirements of such systems are understood, few of the offered solutions are appropriate. This paper suggests that, in order to produce such systems, rigorous specification, design and verification processes are necessary, and that these must all be capable of handling logical and temporal analysis and design. To achieve this, it is suggested that a mixture of tools is (currently) necessary, and that these tools should include object-oriented design techniques with temporal extensions. The points are illustrated by reference to the recent development of a real-time fieldbus system, built around the CAN protocol, which supports true real-time communication over an existing, commercial system.