Updated Firmware Research Articles

Firmware Updates over the Air via LoRa: Unicast and Broadcast Combination for Boosting Update Speed.

The capacity to update firmware is a vital component in the lifecycle of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, even those with restricted hardware resources. This paper explores the best way to wirelessly (Over The Air, OTA) update low-end IoT nodes with difficult access, combining the use of unicast and broadcast communications. The devices under consideration correspond to a recent industrial IoT project that focuses on the installation of intelligent lighting systems within ATEX (potentially explosive atmospheres) zones, connected via LoRa to a gateway. As energy consumption is not limited in this use case, the main figure of merit is the total time required for updating a project. Therefore, the objective is to deliver all the fragments of the firmware to each and all the nodes in a safe way, in the least amount of time. Three different methods, combining unicast and broadcast transmissions in different ways, are explored analytically, with the aim of obtaining the expected update time. The methods are also tested via extensive simulations, modifying different parameters such as the size of the scenario, the number of bytes of each firmware chunk, the number of nodes, and the number of initial broadcast rounds. The simulations show that the update time of a project can be significant, considering the limitations posed by regulations, in terms of the percentage of airtime consumption. However, significant time reductions can be achieved by using the proper method: in some cases, when the number of nodes is high, the update time can be reduced by two orders of magnitude if the correct method is chosen. Moreover, one of the proposed methods is implemented using actual hardware. This real implementation is used to perform firmware update experiments in a lab environment. Overall, the article illustrates the advantage of broadcast approaches in this kind of technology, in which the transmission rate is constant despite the distance between the gateway and the node. However, the advantage of these broadcast methods with respect to the unicast one could be mitigated if the nodes do not run exactly the same firmware version, since the control of the broadcast update would be more difficult and the total update time would increase.

Platform Independent Embedded Linux OTA Method

Embedded devices are often used at remote locations. Accordingly, since it is difficult and costly to physically access the devices for firmware updates, the updates are made with Over-the-Air (OTA). OTA is a firmware update method that allows embedded devices to be updated wirelessly without requiring physical access. OTA applications for Embedded Linux devices are platform-dependent. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop an easy integrated, steady, and robust OTA method. This method runs in the background without any user action on a platform-independent Embedded Linux device and it has a small footprint. The firmware is compressed in this method. The compressed firmware is uploaded to a storage area such as a remote drive, cloud, and repository. The storage area is used efficiently thanks to compressed firmware. The OTA application checks versions of firmware in the storage area and compares them with firmware running on the device. It decides which version is more up-to-date. If the version of the firmware in the storage area is more up-to-date, the OTA application runs in the background and downloads the updated firmware without interfering with the working functions on the device. After the download is completed, compressed firmware is extracted and flashed into the specified memory location. When the device is rebooted after the procedure is completed, the device is going to boot with the new version of the firmware. Consequently, the OTA application can be integrated easily on most Embedded Linux platforms. Besides the OTA application can be enhanced with security and power-safe features.

Penerapan Hypertext Transfer Protocol Web Server untuk Over-The-Air Auto Update Firmware pada Perangkat IoT

Devices in the IoT system are located in many places and difficult to be accesses physically by system administrator. Besides, short life cycle of software/firmware requires to be updated periodically in order to improve the embedded system function to meet the system requirements. These conditions shows the difficulty to update the devices physically. Auto update firmware over the air system became a solution for physical acsess and periodically updated problem which developed by implementing Hypertext Transfer Protocol Web Server. This research is part of study of developing IoT Management System in agricultural environment. This system is in form of web application as an interface to control and manage the update system and a software for update firmware that embedded in the IoT devices. The results shows that the system is able to update firmware of the IoT devices that connected to different network at the same time automatically. Besides, this system can serve around 29,000 request for firmware update concurrently.

Over-the-Air Firmware Updates for Constrained NB-IoT Devices.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is being deployed to provide smart solutions for buildings, logistics, hospitals, and many more. It is growing with billions of connected devices. However, with such tremendous growth, maintenance and support are the hidden burdens. The devices deployed for IoT generally have a light microcontroller, low-power, low memory, and lightweight software. The software, which includes firmware and applications, can be managed remotely via a wireless connection. This improves flexibility, installation time, accessibility, effectiveness, and cost. The firmware can be updated constantly to remove known bugs and improve the functionality of the device. This work presents an approach to update firmware over-the-air (OTA) for constrained IoT devices. We used Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) as the wireless communication standard to communicate between the managing server and devices. NB-IoT is one of the most promising low power wide area (LPWA) network protocols that supports more than 50k devices within a cell using a licensed spectrum. This work is a proof of concept demonstrating the usage of NB-IoT to update firmware for constrained devices. We also calculated the overall power consumption and latency for different sizes of the firmware.

Security Risk of Wireless Implantable Medical Devices

Wireless Security has become increasingly important in recent years. The amount of devices that connect to the internet has skyrocketed with the capability of connecting wirelessly to these devices being recently added. Very few of these devices are equipped with proper security methods. One such device that only recently has been added to the pool of wireless devices is implantable medical devices such as pacemakers. Patients and doctors can connect to these devices to update firmware, view information, and manage the device in other ways; however, the devices still lack the proper cybersecurity and are vulnerable. This paper presents a review of security risk of wireless implantable medical devices, the obstacles and solutions to address security threads that these devices might be exposed to.

OTA Firmware Update for Texas Instruments C2000 Controllers

Firmware updates are necessary to enhance the embedded systems performance and to remove the bugs. But it’s not an efficient manner to be installed it by the technician in the field. For c2000 controllers of Texas instruments dynamic memory allocation is not possible. So, using the proposed method we can maintain both updated firmware and current running firmware for the continuity of the system operation without dynamic memory allocation requirement. In this over the air (OTA) firmware update method, both application and the secondary boot loader (SBL) handles the update process without intervention of the technician. When there is any update the current running application copies the incoming updated firmware using its linker file. After the update process when there is a system reset the SBL calculates the checksum of the updated application, if it matches with the received checksum it executes the updated firmware else it executes the current running firmware without interrupting the application operation.

FOTB: a secure blockchain-based firmware update framework for IoT environment

Recently, numerous exploitations and attacks in IoT environment occurred all over the world. One of the major attacking channels is utilizing the firmware of IoT devices as the access interface to compromise the targeted IoT devices. Therefore, it is important for IoT device manufacturers to support secure and efficient firmware update functionality for sold or deployed IoT devices. In this paper, a secure and verifiable blockchain-based firmware update framework for IoT environment is proposed. The aims of the proposed framework are providing secure peer-to-peer verification mechanism on each new version of firmware released by corresponding device manufacturer and providing a reliable way to distribute the updated firmware to IoT devices in timely manner. Furthermore, the utilization of blockchain technology in the proposed framework ensures the integrity of firmware during its distribution through Internet. The proposed firmware update framework consists of four processes: creation of firmware update contract, creation of third-party firmware update contract, PUSH update mechanism and PULL update mechanism. Six corresponding protocols are derived to support the four processes. The evaluation on performance and security strength of the proposed firmware update framework is conducted. Based on the proofs of formal security analysis, the proposed framework supports mutual authentication and defends against major cyber attacks: firmware modification attack, impersonation attack, man-in-the-middle attack and replay attack.

CodeSys based HMI design and sensor upgrades for a PLC and Atmega2560 controlled industrial conveyor

Engineers nowadays must be able to solve the challenges set by industry 4.0, in order to make existing devices viable for this new trend. This requires a complex, system-based way of thinking. Nowadays, in most cases, we usually find company-specific hardware and software in industrial automated production. However, in different industries, it is not unheard of that a given manufacturing cell, robot, or manipulator became unserviceable, because a manufacturer is no longer on the market, making it impossible to find replacement controllers, software, or updated firmware for our industrial robot, or manipulator. The following project aims to provide a solution to the problem detailed above, where an unserviceable Flexlink conveyor’s controller is replaced with both an Arduino and a PLC, and before realisation of the new control method, simulations are possible before connecting the actual controller.

Monitoring and Hardware Management for Critical Fusion Plasma Instrumentation

Controlled nuclear fusion aims to obtain energy by particles collision confined inside a nuclear reactor (Tokamak). These ionized particles, heavier isotopes of hydrogen, are the main elements inside of plasma that is kept at high temperatures (millions of Celsius degrees). Due to high temperatures and magnetic confinement, plasma is exposed to several sources of instabilities which require a set of procedures by the control and data acquisition systems throughout fusion experiments processes. Control and data acquisition systems often used in nuclear fusion experiments are based on the Advanced Telecommunication Computer Architecture (AdvancedTCA®) standard introduced by the Peripheral Component Interconnect Industrial Manufacturers Group (PICMG®), to meet the demands of telecommunications that require large amount of data (TB) transportation at high transfer rates (Gb/s), to ensure high availability including features such as reliability, serviceability and redundancy. For efficient plasma control, systems are required to collect large amounts of data, process it, store for later analysis, make critical decisions in real time and provide status reports either from the experience itself or the electronic instrumentation involved. Moreover, systems should also ensure the correct handling of detected anomalies and identified faults, notify the system operator of occurred events, decisions taken to acknowledge and implemented changes. Therefore, for everything to work in compliance with specifications it is required that the instrumentation includes hardware management and monitoring mechanisms for both hardware and software. These mechanisms should check the system status by reading sensors, manage events, update inventory databases with hardware system components in use and maintenance, store collected information, update firmware and installed software modules, configure and handle alarms to detect possible system failures and prevent emergency scenarios occurrences. The goal is to ensure high availability of the system and provide safety operation, experiment security and data validation for the fusion experiment. This work aims to contribute to the joint effort of the IPFN control and data acquisition group to develop a hardware management and monitoring application for control and data acquisition instrumentation especially designed for large scale tokamaks like ITER.

Importance of ET Controller Program Settings on Water Conservation Potential

In unincorporated Orange County, Florida, 57% to 62% of single-family residential homes were found to regularly over-irrigate, resulting in the need to find better ways to schedule automatic irrigation. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effects of programming for identical virtual landscapes to further explore the water savings potential of evapotranspiration (ET) controllers. As a virtual test, three Rain Bird ET controllers were studied: the ESP-SMT controller with two firmware options (original and an updated), and the ESP-SMTe, a replacement product for the ESP-SMT. Irrigation was scheduled for a virtual central Florida landscape by altering possible program settings of plant type, microclimate, soil type, and density that relate directly to parameters used in the soil water balance. The ESP-SMTe consistently applied similar amounts of irrigation to the ESP-SMT with updated firmware, indicating that controller updates were minor between the two models. The settings were optimized for Florida landscapes by selecting a heavier soil type, increasing the shade, and selecting a medium stand for a custom plant type, resulting in reductions in irrigation application. The ESP-SMTe and ESP-SMT with updated firmware were different from the ESP-SMT with original firmware, where newer models applied more water despite identical settings, averaging 12 to 21 mm more per month than the original firmware. Additionally, all of the controllers were unable to fully account for rainfall throughout the test resulting in a minimum of 51% in over-irrigation compared to the gross irrigation requirement (GIR). Increasing the accuracy of rainfall accounting would be extremely beneficial to overall water conservation and efficiency. In a separate, independent ET controller study, there was a large discrepancy in irrigation application among multiple brands programmed to irrigate the same virtual landscape. This further shows the importance of understanding the algorithms behind the program settings.

초음파 풍향 풍속계 데이터 로거 시스템의 구현

선박 통신은 1993년 ISO에서 국제 표준 규격인 RS-422통신을 이용하며, 마이크로컨트롤러들 간의 통신을 위해 설계된 시리얼 네트워크 통신 방식을 사용하였으나, 최근 NMEA2000 표준화가 진행됨에 따라 점차 빠르게 Ethernet 기반 통신 환경으로 대체 되어질 전망이다. 선박에서 사용되어지고 있는 주요 계측 장비들은 점차 범용성과 편의성을 가지는 최신 장치들을 이용해 이를 관리하게 되어짐에 따라 선박 내 다양한 곳에서 이를 활용하여 제어 및 관리 시스템들이 구현되어지고 있는 실정이다. 풍향 풍속계는 선박의 마스트 끝이나 풍력 단지 가장 높은 곳에 일반적으로 설치되어 풍향과 풍속을 계측하는 장비로써, 국제해사기구(IMO : International Maritime Organization)의 규정에 따라 필수 장비로 선박에 탑재되고 있는 장비이다. 본 논문에서는 초음파 풍향 풍속 시스템을 처리하기 위해 기존에는 별도 제어 콘솔, 데이터 로거(data-logger), 인디케이터(Indicator) 등의 제어 처리를 위한 기반 장비들이 필요하였던 시스템을 사용자 환경에 따른 PC NETWORK를 이용하여 풍향 풍속 자료 처리시스템을 구현하였다. 또한, 초음파 풍향 풍속 자료 처리 시스템을 구현하기 위한 요소 기술을 기능별 함수로 나타내었으며, NMEA 2000 표준 인증에서도 별도의 운용 콘솔 없이 풍향 풍속 자료의 처리를 위한 자료 처리 운용시스템의 기능들을 구현하고자 하였다. Until now ship communication micro serial network communication method is designed for the communication between the controller and the RS-422 communication on the international standard ISO 1993, but gradually progresses NMEA 2000 standardized fast Ethernet-based communications environments expected to be replaced. In addition, the ship's main instrumentation equipment versatility with ease gradually to control devices by monitoring and controlling are. Wind anemometer, ship mast end, where the highest wind farms typically install a separate console boxes, data loggers, indicators was required in order to manage them, to maintain them, to go through the procedures and cumbersome data update firmware were Therefore, in this paper, using the PC network, ultrasonic wind speed data processing system for implementing functional was expressed as a function of the technology elements, NMEA 2000 standard certified in separate operating console without the features of the data loggers, indicators, implementation by ultrasonic wind data processing system was implemented to minimize the maintenance cost of the operating system.