Embedded system for networked real-time RFID reader

Erilaisia tuotantoprosessiin liitettäviä jäljitettävyysketjuja on käytössä useilla eri teollisuudenaloilla. Jäljitettävyydellä pyritään sekä parantamaan tuotantoprosessia että liittämään enemmän prosessitietoa itse lopputuotteeseen. Huomattavista säästömahdollisuuksista huolimatta koko puunjalostusprosessin kattavaa jäljitettävyyttä ei metsäteollisuuteen ole kuitenkaan toteutettu. Tämä diplomityö on toteutettu osana suurta kansainvälistä Indisputable Key -projektia, jossa tähdätään puutavaran jäljitettävyyden parantamiseen ja jäljitettävyystiedon hyödyntämiseen käytännössä. Tässä työssä suunnitellaan ja toteutetaan RFID lukijan sulautettu järjestelmä. RFID-lukija suunnitellaan VTT:llä, ja sitä käytetään metsäkoneen harvesteripäässä osana puutavaran jäljitettävyysketjua. Käyttöympäristö ja -tarkoitus asettavat RFID-lukijalle ja sulautetulle järjestelmälle vaatimuksia sekä kommunikointiin ja käytettyihin rajapintoihin että myös radiotaajuisen elektroniikan hallintaan. Toteutettu sulautettu järjestelmä hoitaa RFID-lukijan kommunikoinnin isäntäjärjestelmän kanssa käyttäen metsäkoneen CAN-väylää. Lisäksi myös sarjamuotoinen kommunikointi toteutetaan lukijan testaamista ja esittelyä varten. Sekä isäntä-lukija-rajapinnassa että ilmarajapinnassa kommunikoinnissa sulautetun järjestelmän ja muun jäljitettävyysketjun välillä hyödynnetään yleisesti laajassa käytössä olevia RFID-standardeja. Lisäksi sulautettu järjestelmä hoitaa RFID-lukijan sisäistä toimintaa ja elektroniikan hallinnan. Työn tuloksena saadaan sulautettu järjestelmä, joka on testaamalla ja mittaamalla todettu sopivaksi käytettäväksi Indisputable Key -projektissa ja metsäkoneessa. RFID-lukijaa, johon sulautettu järjestelmä toteutetaan, hyödynnetään Indisputable Key -projektin laajan mittakaavan testeissä, jotka on suunniteltu suoritettaviksi talvella 2009-2010.Traceability chains are used in multiple industrial fields to gather more knowledge about the manufacturing processes and, also, to link gathered data to the final product. Although, significant savings would be possible also in Forestry, no complete traceability chain yet exists. This thesis is written as a part of a large international Indisputable Key project that aims to improve the traceability in Forestry leading to economical and environmental improvements in the wood processing. In this thesis an embedded system for an RFID reader is designed and implemented. The RFID reader is designed at VTT to be used in a forest harvester head as a part of the wood material traceability chain. Using environment and purpose set requirements for the reader and the embedded software in terms of networking possibilities and used communication interface standards as well as electronics control. The designed embedded system handles the host communication to the rest of the traceability system via the forest harvester CAN network, but, also, additional serial line interface for host communication is implemented and used for testing and demonstration purposes. Embedded system of the reader handles both host and air interface communication through widely used EPCglobal RFID protocols. In addition to the networking and host and tag communication interfaces, the embedded system controls the inner operation of the RFID reader and RF electronics. Harvester head, where the RFID reader is utilized, limits the use of normal RF designs and sets requirements also for the RF electronics control. The result of the thesis is an embedded system that is tested and measured to be suitable for the use in the Indisputable Key and the forest harvester. RFID reader is utilized in the Indisputable Key final demonstrations and large-scale testing that are scheduled to be conducted in Winter 2009-2010

Review. Monitoring the intermodal, refrigerated transport of fruit using sensor networks

Most of the fruit in Europe is transported by road, but the saturation of the major arteries, the increased demand for freight transport, and environmental concerns all indicate there is a need to change this means of transport. A combination of transport modes using universal containers is one of the solutions proposed: this is known as intermodal transport. Tracking the transport of fruit in reefer containers along the supply chain is the means by which product quality can be guaranteed. The integration of emerging information technologies can now provide real-time status updates. This paper reviews the literature and the latest technologies in this area as part of a national project. Particular emphasis is placed on multiplexed digital communication technologies and wireless sensor networks

Remote ISOBUS telematics in agricultural environment

Many agricultural equipment manufacturers are mainly hardware providers, and the product life cycle services are limited to machine maintenance and spare parts. However, the modern wireless technologies makes it possible to access machines in their working environment, thus enabling many new applications. Accessing machines also requires accessing their internal communications network, which in agricultural machines is increasingly often ISOBUS. The purpose of this thesis is to study the available telematics information and interfaces in an ISOBUS system, and also the applications this informations makes possible. Based on this information telematics functionalities are selected and implemented to Wapice Remote Management (WRM) system. Especially the standard manufacturer independent interfaces provided by ISO 11783 standard, in which the ISOBUS is based on, are studied. The thesis is divided into three main parts. First, the current state-of-the-art is presented followed by usage examples for the telematics system which also highlights the main requirements for the system in whole. Thereafter, the second part introduces SAE J1939 protocol in which the ISOBUS is based on. The main concepts of the ISOBUS protocol are also introduced, and the ISOBUS is compared to other common CAN-based protocols. The results for the study of available information sources in an ISOBUS system as well as a general example reference architecture for the system are presented. In the third part the implementation of ISOBUS support in WRM system and the implementation of ISOBUS telematics functionalities is presented. The results of this thesis suggest that the ISO 11783 standard provides many functionalities and interfaces that can be used to collect telematics as well as process information in a manufacturer independent way. This is a key factor when developing a generic system. The implementation for the WRM system also shows that it is possible to integrate ISOBUS telematics in an existing remote management system

A conformance test framework for the DeviceNet fieldbus

The DeviceNet fieldbus technology is introduced and discussed. DeviceNet is an open standard fieldbus which uses the proven Controller Area Network technology. As an open standard fieldbus, the device conformance is extremely important to ensure smooth operation. The error management in DeviceNet protocol is highlighted and an error injection technique is devised to test the implementation under test for the correct error-recovery conformance. The designed Error Frame Generator prototype allows the error management and recovery of DeviceNet implementations to be conformance tested. The Error Frame Generator can also be used in other Controller Area Network based protocols. In addition, an automated Conformance Test Engine framework has been defined for realising the conformance testing of DeviceNet implementations. Automated conformance test is used to achieve consistent and reliable test results, apart from the benefits in time and personnel savings. This involves the investigations and feasibility studies in adapting the ISO 9646 conformance test standards for use in DeviceNet fieldbus. The Unique Input/Output sequences method is used for the generation of DeviceNet conformance tests. The Unique Input/Output method does not require a fully specified protocol specification and gives shorter test sequences, since only specific state information is needed. As conformance testing addresses only the protocol verification, it is foreseen that formal method validation of the DeviceNet protocol must be performed at some stage to validate the DeviceNet specification

Protocol and Architecture to Bring Things into Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept proposes that everyday objects are globally accessible from the Internet and integrate into new services having a remarkable impact on our society. Opposite to Internet world, things usually belong to resource-challenged environmentswhere energy, data throughput, and computing resources are scarce. Building upon existing standards in the field such as IEEE1451 and ZigBee and rooted in context semantics, this paper proposes CTP (Communication Things Protocol) as a protocol specification to allow interoperability among things with different communication standards as well as simplicity and functionality to build IoT systems. Also, this paper proposes the use of the IoT gateway as a fundamental component in IoT architectures to provide seamless connectivity and interoperability among things and connect two different worlds to build the IoT: the Things world and the Internet world. Both CTP and IoT gateway constitute a middleware content-centric architecture presented as the mechanism to achieve a balance between the intrinsic limitations of things in the physical world and what is required fromthem in the virtual world. Said middleware content-centric architecture is implemented within the frame of two European projects targeting smart environments and proving said CTP’s objectives in real scenarios

The Detector Control System of the ATLAS experiment at CERN: An application to the calibration of the modules of the Tile Hadron Calorimeter

The principle subject of this thesis work is the design and development of the Detector Control System (DCS) of the ATLAS experiment at CERN. The DCS must ensure the coherent and safe operation of the detector and handle the communication with external systems, like the LHC accelerator and CERN services. A bidirectional data flow between the Data AcQuisition (DAQ) system and the DCS will enable coherent operation of the experiment. The LHC experiments represent new challenges for the design of the control system. The extremely high complexity of the project forces the design of different components of the detector and related systems to be performed well ahead to their use. The long lifetime of the LHC experiments imposes the use of evolving technologies and modular design. The overall dimensions of the detector and the high number of I/O channels call for a control system with processing power distributed all over the facilities of the experiment while keeping a low cost. The environmental conditions require the utilization of magnetic field and radiation tolerant equipment. Homogeneity throughout the system, despite of the diversity of equipment and the number of people involved, is a key concern in the design of the DCS. For these reasons, the DCS will be implemented using well defined building blocks to reduce the design work, to ease commissioning and integration and to minimize the maintenance effort required during the lifetime of the experiment. This thesis is divided into two main parts. In the first one, the requirements of the DCS are analyzed and the overall architecture of the system is designed. The building blocks of the system, and the different tests performed for their qualification for operation in ATLAS are presented. In the second part, the different technologies of the DCS are used to implement the control system for the final calibration of the modules of the ATLAS Tile Hadron Calorimeter. In addition, the effect of the DCS controlled parameters on the calorimeter response (e.g. the energy resolution and the linearity of the response) have been studied

Securing CAN-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

With the exponential growth of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), new security challenges have emerged. Various vulnerabilities, threats, attacks, and controls have been introduced for the new generation of CPS. However, there lacks a systematic review of the CPS security literature. In particular, the heterogeneity of CPS components and the diversity of CPS systems have made it difficult to study the problem with one generalized model. As the first component of this dissertation, existing research on CPS security is studied and systematized under a unified framework. Smart cars, as a CPS application, were further explored under the proposed framework and new attacks are identified and addressed. The Control Area Network (CAN bus) is a prevalent serial communication protocol adopted in industrial CPS, especially in small and large vehicles, ships, planes, and even in drones, radar systems, and submarines. Unfortunately, the CAN bus was designed without any security considerations. We then propose and demonstrate a stealthy targeted Denial of Service (DoS) attack against CAN. Experimentation shows that the attack is effective and superior to attacks of the same category due to its stealthiness and ability to avoid detection from current countermeasures. Two controls are proposed to defend against various spoofing and DoS attacks on CAN. The first one aims to minimize the attack using a mechanism called ID-Hopping so that CAN arbitration IDs are randomized so an attacker would not be able to target them. ID-Hopping raises the bar for attackers by randomizing the expected patterns in a CAN network. Such randomization hinders an attacker’s ability to launch targeted DoS attacks. Based on the evaluation on the testbed, the randomization mechanism, ID-Hopping, holds a promising solution for targeted DoS, and reverse engineering CAN IDs, and which CAN networks are most vulnerable. The second countermeasure is a novel CAN firewall that aims to prevent an attacker from launching a plethora of nontraditional attacks on CAN that existing solutions do not adequately address. The firewall is placed between a potential attacker’s node and the rest of the CAN bus. Traffic is controlled bi-directionally between the main bus and the attacker’s side so that only benign traffic can pass to the main bus. This ensures that an attacker cannot arbitrarily inject malicious traffic into the main bus. Demonstration and evaluation of the attack and firewall were conducted by a bit-level analysis, i.e., “Bit banging”, of CAN’s traffic. Results show that the firewall successfully prevents the stealthy targeted DoS attack, as well as, other recent attacks. To evaluate the proposed attack and firewall, a testbed was built that consisted of BeagleBone Black and STM32 Nucleo- 144 microcontrollers to simulate real CAN traffic. Finally, a design of an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) was proposed to complement the firewall. It utilized the proposed firewall to add situational awareness capabilities to the bus’s security posture and detect and react to attacks that might bypass the firewall based on certain rules

Distributed Control Architecture

This document describes the development and testing of a novel Distributed Control Architecture (DCA). The DCA developed during the study is an attempt to turn the components used to construct unmanned vehicles into a network of intelligent devices, connected using standard networking protocols. The architecture exists at both a hardware and software level and provides a communication channel between control modules, actuators and sensors. A single unified mechanism for connecting sensors and actuators to the control software will reduce the technical knowledge required by platform integrators and allow control systems to be rapidly constructed in a Plug and Play manner. DCA uses standard networking hardware to connect components, removing the need for custom communication channels between individual sensors and actuators. The use of a common architecture for the communication between components should make it easier for software to dynamically determine the vehicle s current capabilities and increase the range of processing platforms that can be utilised. Implementations of the architecture currently exist for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile 5, Linux and Microchip dsPIC30 microcontrollers. Conceptually, DCA exposes the functionality of each networked device as objects with interfaces and associated methods. Allowing each object to expose multiple interfaces allows for future upgrades without breaking existing code. In addition, the use of common interfaces should help facilitate component reuse, unit testing and make it easier to write generic reusable software