Design of a New High Bandwidth Network for Agricultural Machines

Ethernet is by now the most adopted bus for fast digital communications in many environments, from household entertainment to PLC robotics in industrial assembly lines. Even in automotive industry, the interest in this technology is increasingly growing, pushed forward by research and by the need of high throughput that high dynamics distributed control demands. Although 100base-TX physical layer (PHY) does not seem to meet EMC requirements for vehicular and heavy-duty environments, OPEN Alliance BroadR Reach (soon becoming IEEE standard as IEEE 802.3bw) technology is the most promising and already adopted Ethernet-compatible PHY, reaching 100Mbps over an unshielded twisted pair. An agricultural machine is usually a system including tractor and one or more implements attached to it, to the back or to the front. Nowadays, a specific CAN-based distributed control network support treatments and applications, namely ISOBUS, defined by ISO 11783. This work deals with architectural and technological aspects of advanced Ethernet networks in order to provide a high-throughput deterministic network for in-vehicle distributed control for agricultural machinery. Two main paths of investigation will be presented: one concerning the prioritization of standard Ethernet taking advantage of standard ways of prioritization in well-established technologies; the other changing the channel access method of Ethernet using an industrial fieldbus, chosen after careful investigation. The prioritization of standard Ethernet is performed at two, non-mutual exclusive layers of the ISO OSI stack: one at L3, using the diffserv (former TOS) Ip field; one at L2, using the priorities defined in IEEE 802.1p, used in IEEE 802.1q (VLAN). These choices have several implications in the specific field of application of the agricultural machines. The change of the access method, instead, focused on the adoption of a specific fieldbus, in order to grant deterministic access to the medium and reliability of communications for safety-relevant applications. After a survey, that will be reported, the Powerlink fieldbus was chosen and some modifications will be discussed in order to suit the scope of the research

Characterizing, managing and monitoring the networks for the ATLAS data acquisition system

Particle physics studies the constituents of matter and the interactions between them. Many of the elementary particles do not exist under normal circumstances in nature. However, they can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as is done in particle accelerators. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) being built at CERN will be the world's largest circular particle accelerator, colliding protons at energies of 14 TeV. Only a very small fraction of the interactions will give raise to interesting phenomena. The collisions produced inside the accelerator are studied using particle detectors. ATLAS is one of the detectors built around the LHC accelerator ring. During its operation, it will generate a data stream of 64 Terabytes/s. A Trigger and Data Acquisition System (TDAQ) is connected to ATLAS -- its function is to acquire digitized data from the detector and apply trigger algorithms to identify the interesting events. Achieving this requires the power of over 2000 computers plus an interconnecting network capable of sustaining a throughput of over 150 Gbit/s with minimal loss and delay. The implementation of this network required a detailed study of the available switching technologies to a high degree of precision in order to choose the appropriate components. We developed an FPGA-based platform (the GETB) for testing network devices. The GETB system proved to be flexible enough to be used as the ba sis of three different network-related projects. An analysis of the traffic pattern that is generated by the ATLAS data-taking applications was also possible thanks to the GETB. Then, while the network was being assembled, parts of the ATLAS detector started commissioning -- this task relied on a functional network. Thus it was imperative to be able to continuously identify existing and usable infrastructure and manage its operations. In addition, monitoring was required to detect any overload conditions with an indication where the excess demand was being generated. We developed tools to ease the maintenance of the network and to automatically produce inventory reports. We created a system that discovers the network topology and this permitted us to verify the installation and to track its progress. A real-time traffic visualization system has been built, allowing us to see at a glance which network segments are heavily utilized. Later, as the network achieves production status, it will be necessary to extend the monitoring to identify individual applications' use of the available bandwidth. We studied a traffic monitoring technology that will allow us to have a better understanding on how the network is used. This technology, based on packet sampling, gives the possibility of having a complete view of the network: not only its total capacity utilization, but also how this capacity is divided among users and software applicati ons. This thesis describes the establishment of a set of tools designed to characterize, monitor and manage complex, large-scale, high-performance networks. We describe in detail how these tools were designed, calibrated, deployed and exploited. The work that led to the development of this thesis spans over more than four years and closely follows the development phases of the ATLAS network: its design, its installation and finally, its current and future operation

Major: Electronics and Communication Engineering

Today, information technology is strategically important to the goals and aspirations of the business enterprises, government and high-level education institutions – university. Universities are facing new challenges with the emerging global economy characterized by the importance of providing faster communication services and improving the productivity and effectiveness of individuals. New challenges such as provides an information network that supports the demands and diversification of university issues. A new network architecture, which is a set of design principles for build a network, is one of the pillar bases. It is the cornerstone that enables the university’s faculty, researchers, students, administrators, and staff to discover, learn, reach out, and serve society. This thesis focuses on the network architecture definitions and fundamental components. Three most important characteristics of high-quality architecture are that: it’s open network architecture; it’s service-oriented characteristics and is an IP network based on packets. There are four important components in the architecture, which are: Services and Network Management, Network Control, Core Switching and Edge Access. The theoretical contribution of this study is a reference model Architecture of University Campus Network that can be followed or adapted to build a robust yet flexible network that respond next generation requirements. The results found are relevant to provide an important complete reference guide to the process of building campus network which nowadays play a very important role. Respectively, the research gives university networks a structured modular model that is reliable, robust and can easily grow

A virtual intergrated networks emulator on xen (viNex)

Network research experiments have traditionally been conducted in emulated or simulated environments. Emulators are frequently deployed on physical networks. Network simulators provide a self-contained and simple environment that can be hosted on one host. Simulators provide a synthetic environment that is only an approximation of the real world and therefore the results might not be a true re ection of reality. Recent progress in virtualisation technologies enable the deployment of multiple interconnected, virtual hosts on one machine. Virtual hosts run real network protocol stacks and therefore provide an emulated environment on a single host. The rst objective of this dissertation is to build a network emulator (viNEX) using a virtualisation platform (XEN). The second objective is to evaluate whether viNEX can be used to conduct some network research experiments. Thirdly, some limitations of this approach are identifiedComputingM. Sc. (Computer Science

Power analysis with variable traffic loads for next generation interconnection networks

Power consumption is the most important factor for the consideration of next generation supercomputers. In addition, the requirement of power usages can be even scaled up to more than 300MW (which is nearly equal to the one nuclear power plant) with the conventional networks. On the other hand, hierarchical interconnection networks can be a possible solution to those issues. 3D-TTN is a hierarchical interconnection network where lowest level is configured as the 3Dtorus network, following the 2Dtorus network at the higher-level networks. The main focus for this paper is the power analysis with variable traffic load along with the fault tolerance, cost, packing density and message traffic density of 3D-TTN comparing against various other networks. In our early research, 3D-TTN has achieved near about 21% better diameter performance, 12% better average distance performance and eventually required about 32.48% less router power usage at the lowest level than the 5Dtorus network for 1% traffic load. This paper shows the power comparison with the router and link power rather than considering the router power only. Our analysis shows that 3DTTN will require about 39.96% less router and link power than the 5Dtorus network for 10% traffic. With 30% traffic load, 3DTTN will require about 38.42% less power than the 5Dtorus network for the on-chip network. Even considering some topological parameters, 3D-TTN could also achieve some desirable performance by comparing other networks

Network simulation for professional audio networks

Audio Engineers are required to design and deploy large multi-channel sound systems which meet a set of requirements and use networking technologies such as Firewire and Ethernet AVB. Bandwidth utilisation and parameter groupings are among the factors which need to be considered in these designs. An implementation of an extensible, generic simulation framework would allow audio engineers to easily compare protocols and networking technologies and get near real time responses with regards to bandwidth utilisation. Our hypothesis is that an application-level capability can be developed which uses a network simulation framework to enable this process and enhances the audio engineer’s experience of designing and configuring a network. This thesis presents a new, extensible simulation framework which can be utilised to simulate professional audio networks. This framework is utilised to develop an application - AudioNetSim - based on the requirements of an audio engineer. The thesis describes the AudioNetSim models and implementations for Ethernet AVB, Firewire and the AES- 64 control protocol. AudioNetSim enables bandwidth usage determination for any network configuration and connection scenario and is used to compare Firewire and Ethernet AVB bandwidth utilisation. It also applies graph theory to the circular join problem and provides a solution to detect circular joins

Quality of service modeling and analysis for carrier ethernet

Today, Ethernet is moving into the mainstream evolving into a carrier grade technology. Termed as Carrier Ethernet it is expected to overcome most of the\ud shortcomings of native Ethernet. It is envisioned to carry services end-to-end serving corporate data networking and broadband access demands as well as backhauling wireless traffic. As the penetration of Ethernet increases, the offered Quality of Service (QoS) will become increasingly important and a distinguishing factor between different service providers. The challenge is to meet the QoS requirements of end applications such as response times, throughput, delay and jitter by managing the network resources at hand. Since Ethernet was not designed to operate in large public networks it does not possess functionalities to address this issue. In this thesis we propose and analyze mechanisms which improve the QoS performance of Ethernet enabling it to meet the demands of the current and next generation services and applications.\u

Cloud computing enhancements and private cloud management

Diseño e implementación de los circuitos electrónicos y software de un equipo para monitorización de fermentación Maleoláctica en la producción de vino. Se utiliza la medida de la variación de la velocidad de una onda de ultrasonido en el medio fermentado.The objective of this project is to implement a private cloud in a small datacenter network using MAAS server provisioning tool and Openstack software platform for cloud computing, leaving it ready to be interconnected it with an experimental SDN Network. The private cloud and Network will serve the telecommunications group undergraduate and post-graduate labs and it will be used both as a production Network and as a test bed for new research with the cloud being used to integrate several available computing resources in order to maximize the available computation power for research tasks.El objetivo de este proyecto es implementar una nube privada en una pequeña red de centro de datos usando la herramienta provisionadora de servidores MAAS y el proyecto de computación en la nuve Openstack para que posteriormente esta sea interconectada con una red SDN experimental. La nube privada y la red servirán a los laboratorios de pregrado y posgrado del grupo de telecomunicaciones de la Universidad y se utilizará tanto como una red de producción como un banco de pruebas para nuevas investigaciones, usando la nuve para integrar vários recursos informáticos disponibles para maximizar la computación disponible para las tareas de investigación.L'objectiu d'aquest projecte és implementar un núvol privat en una petita xarxa de centre de dades fent servir la eina d'aprovisionament de servidors MAAS el projecte de computació en el núvol Openstack per a que posteriorment aquesta sigui interconectada amb una xarxa SDN experimental. El núvol privat i la xarxa serviràn als laboratoris de pregrau i postgrau del grup de telecomunicacions de la Universitat i s'utilitzarà tant com una xarxa de producció com un banc de proves per a noves investigacions, fent servir el núvol per integrar diversos recursos informàtics disponibles per maximitzar la computació disponible per a tasques d'investigació

Dynamic Quality-of-Service Management Under Software-Defined Networking Architectures

The Internet is facing new challenges emerging from new trends in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for example, cloud services, Big Data, increased mobile usage etc. Traditional IP networks rely in two design principles that, despite serving as an effective solution in the last decades, have become deprecated and not well fit for the new challenges. First, the control and data plane are tightly embedded in the networking devices and second, the structure is highly decentralized with no centralized point of management. This static and rigid architecture leaves no space for innovation with a consequence lack of scalability. Also, it leads to high management and operation costs. The SDN paradigm provides a more dynamic, manageable, cost-effective and adaptable architecture that is ready for the dynamic nature of today's applications. The goal of this thesis is a novel SDN-enabled solution that provides dynamic Quality of Service management for real-time and multimedia applications. This solution will be tested and implemented over a real, not-simulated testbed, composed by OpenFlow-enabled devices, the ONOS SDN controller and client terminals that produced/consume data streams. Furthermore, it is also expected to characterize and evaluate the benefits of the SDN-based solution against a traditional usage of the network (non-SDN)