Integrated Design and Implementation of Embedded Control Systems with Scilab

Embedded systems are playing an increasingly important role in control engineering. Despite their popularity, embedded systems are generally subject to resource constraints and it is therefore difficult to build complex control systems on embedded platforms. Traditionally, the design and implementation of control systems are often separated, which causes the development of embedded control systems to be highly time-consuming and costly. To address these problems, this paper presents a low-cost, reusable, reconfigurable platform that enables integrated design and implementation of embedded control systems. To minimize the cost, free and open source software packages such as Linux and Scilab are used. Scilab is ported to the embedded ARM-Linux system. The drivers for interfacing Scilab with several communication protocols including serial, Ethernet, and Modbus are developed. Experiments are conducted to test the developed embedded platform. The use of Scilab enables implementation of complex control algorithms on embedded platforms. With the developed platform, it is possible to perform all phases of the development cycle of embedded control systems in a unified environment, thus facilitating the reduction of development time and cost.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures; Open Access at http://www.mdpi.org/sensors/papers/s8095501.pd

Unified radio and network control across heterogeneous hardware platforms

Experimentation is an important step in the investigation of techniques for handling spectrum scarcity or the development of new waveforms in future wireless networks. However, it is impractical and not cost effective to construct custom platforms for each future network scenario to be investigated. This problem is addressed by defining Unified Programming Interfaces that allow common access to several platforms for experimentation-based prototyping, research, and development purposes. The design of these interfaces is driven by a diverse set of scenarios that capture the functionality relevant to future network implementations while trying to keep them as generic as possible. Herein, the definition of this set of scenarios is presented as well as the architecture for supporting experimentation-based wireless research over multiple hardware platforms. The proposed architecture for experimentation incorporates both local and global unified interfaces to control any aspect of a wireless system while being completely agnostic to the actual technology incorporated. Control is feasible from the low-level features of individual radios to the entire network stack, including hierarchical control combinations. A testbed to enable the use of the above architecture is utilized that uses a backbone network in order to be able to extract measurements and observe the overall behaviour of the system under test without imposing further communication overhead to the actual experiment. Based on the aforementioned architecture, a system is proposed that is able to support the advancement of intelligent techniques for future networks through experimentation while decoupling promising algorithms and techniques from the capabilities of a specific hardware platform

Case Studies in Thin Client Acceptance

Thin Client technology boasts an impressive range of financial, technical and administrative benefits. Combined with virtualisation technology, higher bandwidth availability and cheaper high performance processors, many believe that Thin Clients have come of age. But despite a growing body of literature documenting successful Thin Client deployments there remains an undercurrent of concern regarding user acceptance of this technology and a belief that greater efforts are required to understand how to integrate Thin Clients into existing, predominantly PC-based, deployments. It would be more accurate to state that the challenge facing the acceptance of Thin Clients is a combination of architectural design and integration strategy rather than a purely technical issue. Careful selection of services to be offered over Thin Clients is essential to their acceptance. Through an evolution of three case studies the user acceptance issues were reviewed and resolved resulting in a 92% acceptance rate of the final Thin Client deployment. No significant bias was evident in our comparison of user attitudes towards desktop services delivered over PCs and Thin Clients

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

A software toolkit for radio frequency data terminals

This thesis is concerned with the computer industry of "automatic identification.” Central to automatic identification is the use of barcodes and related technologies, including wireless computer networks and Radio Frequency Data Terminals (RFDTs) RFDTs are hand held computers incorporating a screen, barcode scanner, and radio transceiver. Programming of these devices is bespoke to each customer, hence this thesis' subject: producing a toolkit for economical development of RFDT software. The work reported in this thesis was developed in a joint project between Castle Auto I D. Solutions', a barcode systems integration company, and the University of Durham. This was enabled by a TCS Programme (^2), which places a university employee within the company for "technology transfer." The thesis begins with a study of the relevant hardware and technology in the automatic identification industry. The common software components of data collection systems are then identified, and a "toolkit" of reusable software components is proposed, implemented, and refined. Particular attention is paid to code re-use. In refining the toolkit, several commercial applications are developed and deployed into industry. The final case study is a commercially successful 802.1 1b wireless site survey system, developed using the toolkit

Application integration for production operations management using OPC Unified Architecture

Nykyaikaisessa tuotantolaitoksessa on monia tietojärjestelmiä, joiden vertikaalinen ja horisontaalinen integraatio on edellytys tehokkaalle tuotannonohjaukselle. Järjestelmien integroinnin ongelmia ovat monet erilaiset rajapinnat, välitettävän tiedon määrä ja yhtenäisten tietomallien puute. Uusi OPC UA -spesifikaatio määrittelee alustariippumattoman tiedonsiirtorajapinnan, joka mahdollistaa semantiikaltaan monimutkaisten tietomallien käyttämisen tiedonsiirrossa. Se tarjoaa rajapinnan paitsi luku- ja kirjoitusoperaatioille sekä metodien kutsumiselle, myös asynkronisten tapahtumien välittämiselle. ISA-95-standardin avulla valmistuksenohjaus- ja automaatiojärjestelmän integraation arkkitehtuuri voidaan määritellä abstraktilla tasolla. Standardi jakaa integraatioon vaadittavat valmistuksenohjaustason toiminnallisuudet ryhmiin ja määrittelee myös niiden välisen tiedonsiirron sisällön. ISA-88-standardi määrittelee panosprosesseille tyypilliset laitehierarkiat, proseduurit sekä reseptitietorakenteet. Tässä työssä tarkastellaan kuinka OPC UA soveltuu prosessinohjaus- ja valmistuksenohjausjärjestelmien integraatioon. Työssä tarkastellaan myös kuinka ISA-88- ja ISA-95-standardien määrittelemiä tietorakenteita sekä hierarkia- ja järjestelmämalleja hyödynnetään valmistuksen- ja prosessinohjausjärjestelmien integraatiossa. Toteutettu opetus- ja tutkimuskäyttöön tarkoitettu järjestelmäympäristö osoittaa ISA-88- ja ISA-95-standardien sujuvan käytön OPC UA -teknologian kanssa. Se osoittaa myös, että OPC UA -palvelujen sisällyttäminen niin valmistuksenohjaus- kuin prosessinohjausjärjestelmiinkin mahdollistaa tulevaisuudessa tehokkaan ja yksinkertaisen järjestelmäintegraation.A modern manufacturing company employs many information systems which require both vertical and horizontal integration in order to enable effective manufacturing operations management. The integration confronts many challenges, like different interfaces, a large amount of information to exchange and the lack of standardized information models. OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) specification defines a platform-independent data exchange interface which enables exchanging complex information models. It provides an interface not only for read and write operations and method calls but also for transmitting asynchronous events. The ISA-95 standard can be used as the basis for designing the system integration in an abstract level. It defines the manufacturing execution system (MES) activities, their relations and the data exchanged between them. The ISA-88 standard defines equipment hierarchies, procedures and recipe structures characteristic to batch process systems. This study is focused on utilizing OPC UA in conjunction with a service-oriented integration middleware and the ISA-88/95 standards for integration between an MES and a process control system in the context of batch process management. First, the requirements of integration are identified and then an integration design combining the mentioned technologies is proposed. The design is evaluated with an experimental implementation and test scenarios. The result of the work is a testbed environment which is usable for research and educational purposes in the future. Based on this work, one can state that the utilization of the ISA-88/95 standards simplifies the integration design process considerably and OPC UA combined with a service-oriented integration middleware is quite an adequate tool to complement the design

Review of Open Source Simulators in ICS/IIoT Security Context

In industrial control systems (ICS), simulation has found widespread use during system design and in tuning process control parameters or exploring the effects of new control algorithms. Simulation enables the assessment of performance at scale and allows research to be conducted by those with limited access to real physical infrastructures. However, as ICSs are often no longer isolated from other networks and the internet, hence are subject to security and safety issues, simulation is also required to understand the issues and their solution. To foster transparent, collaborative and cost-effective studies, demonstrations, and solution development, and attract the broadest interest base, simulation is indeed critical and Open Source is a good way to go since simulators in this category are less expensive to access, install, and use, and can be run with general purpose (non-proprietary) computing equipment and setups. Findings This research presents the following key findings: 1. A lot of Open Source simulation tools exist and span applications areas such as communications and sensor networks (C&WSNs), ICS/SCADA, and IIoT. 2. The functional structures and characteristics that appear common in Open Source simulators include: supported licence types, programming languages, operating systems platforms, user interface types, and available documentation and types. 3. Typical research around Open Source simulators is built around modelling, analysis and optimisation of operations in relations to factors such as flexibility, mobility, scalability, and active user support. No single Open Source simulator addresses all conceivable characteristics. While some are strong in specific contexts relative to their development, they are often weak in other purpose-based research capabilities, especially in the context of IoT. 4. Most of the reviewed Open Source tools are not designed to address security contexts. The few that address security such as SCADASim only consider very limited contexts such as testing and evaluating Denial-of-Service (DoS), Man-in-the-middle (Mitm), Eavesdropping, and Spoofing attacks. Recommendations The following key recommendations are presented: 1. Future developments of Open Source simulators (especially for IIoT) should explore the potential for functionalities that can enable the integration of diverse simulators and platforms to achieve an encompassing setup. 2. Developers should explore the capabilities of generic simulators towards achieving architectures with expansible capabilities into multi-class domains, support easier and faster modelling of complex systems, and which can attract varied users and contributors. 3. Functional characteristics such as; ease of use, degree of community acceptance and use, and suitability for industrial applications, should also be considered as selection and development criteria, and to emphasise simulator effectiveness. This can support consistency, credibility, and simulation system relevance within a domain that is continually evolving. 4. Future Open Source simulation projects developments should consider and adopt the more common structural attributes including; Platform Type, Open Source Licence Type, Programming Language, User Interfaces, Documentation, and Communication Types. These should be further complemented by appropriate editorial controls spanning quality coding, revision control and effective project disseminations and management, to boost simulation tool credibility and wide acceptance. 5. The range of publication dates (earliest to latest) for: citations, code commits, and number of contributors associated to Open Source simulator projects can also support the decision for interests and adoption of specific Open Source projects. 6. Research objectives for ICS/IIoT Open Source simulators should also include security performance and optimisation with considerations towards enhancing confidentiality, integrity and availability. 7. Further studies should explore the evaluation of security topics which could be addressed by simulation – more specifically, proposing how this may be achieved and identifying what can't be addressed by simulation. Investigations into simulation frameworks that can allow multi-mode simulations to be configured and operated are also required. Research into Industry 4.0 System-of-Systems (SoS) security evaluations, dependency, and cascading impacts method or analysis is another area of importanc