An open platform for rapid-prototyping protection and control schemes with IEC 61850

Communications is becoming increasingly important to the operation of protection and control schemes. Although offering many benefits, using standards-based communications, particularly IEC 61850, in the course of the research and development of novel schemes can be complex. This paper describes an open-source platform which enables the rapid prototyping of communications-enhanced schemes. The platform automatically generates the data model and communications code required for an intelligent electronic device to implement a publisher-subscriber generic object-oriented substation event and sampled-value messaging. The generated code is tailored to a particular system configuration description (SCD) file, and is therefore extremely efficient at runtime. It is shown here how a model-centric tool, such as the open-source Eclipse Modeling Framework, can be used to manage the complexity of the IEC 61850 standard, by providing a framework for validating SCD files and by automating parts of the code generation process. The flexibility and convenience of the platform are demonstrated through a prototype of a real-time, fast-acting load-shedding scheme for a low-voltage microgrid network. The platform is the first open-source implementation of IEC 61850 which is suitable for real-time applications, such as protection, and is therefore readily available for research and education

DKVF: A Framework for Rapid Prototyping and Evaluating Distributed Key-value Stores

We present our framework DKVF that enables one to quickly prototype and evaluate new protocols for key-value stores and compare them with existing protocols based on selected benchmarks. Due to limitations of CAP theorem, new protocols must be developed that achieve the desired trade-off between consistency and availability for the given application at hand. Hence, both academic and industrial communities focus on developing new protocols that identify a different (and hopefully better in one or more aspect) point on this trade-off curve. While these protocols are often based on a simple intuition, evaluating them to ensure that they indeed provide increased availability, consistency, or performance is a tedious task. Our framework, DKVF, enables one to quickly prototype a new protocol as well as identify how it performs compared to existing protocols for pre-specified benchmarks. Our framework relies on YCSB (Yahoo! Cloud Servicing Benchmark) for benchmarking. We demonstrate DKVF by implementing four existing protocols --eventual consistency, COPS, GentleRain and CausalSpartan-- with it. We compare the performance of these protocols against different loading conditions. We find that the performance is similar to our implementation of these protocols from scratch. And, the comparison of these protocols is consistent with what has been reported in the literature. Moreover, implementation of these protocols was much more natural as we only needed to translate the pseudocode into Java (and add the necessary error handling). Hence, it was possible to achieve this in just 1-2 days per protocol. Finally, our framework is extensible. It is possible to replace individual components in the framework (e.g., the storage component)

A Framework for Rapid Development and Portable Execution of Packet-Handling Applications

This paper presents a framework that enables the execution of packet-handling applications (such as sniffers, firewalls, intrusion detectors, etc.) on different hardware platforms. This framework is centered on the NetVM - a novel, portable, and efficient virtual processor targeted for packet-based processing - and the NetPDL - a language dissociating applications from protocol specifications. In addition, a high-level programming language that enables rapid development of packet-based applications is presented

SAFE: Secure-Roaming Agents for E-commerce

The development of the Internet has made a powerful impact on the concept of commerce. E-commerce, a new way to conduct business, is gaining more and more popularity. Despite its rapid growth, there are limitations that hinder the expansion of e-commerce. The primary concern for most people when talking about on-line shopping is security. Due to the open nature of the Internet, personal financial details necessary for on-line shopping can be stolen if sufficient security mechanism is not put in place. How to provide the necessary assurance of security to consumers remains a question mark despite various past efforts. Another concern is the lack of intelligence. The Internet is an ocean of information depository. It is rich in content but lacks the necessary intelligent tools to help one locate the correct piece of information. Intelligent agent, a piece of software that can act on behalf of its owner intelligently, is designed to fill this gap. However, no matter how intelligent an agent is, if it remains on its owner’s machine and does not have any roaming capability, its functionality is limited. With the roaming capability, more security concerns arise. In response to these concerns, SAFE, Secure roaming Agent For E-commerce, is designed to provide secure roaming capability to intelligent agents

The architecture of discovery net : towards grid-based discovery services

Imperial Users onl

Applications of computer communications in education.

Applications of computer communications can be used in many ways in education. An overview is given of a number of categories of computer communications applications in learning-related activities. Particular attention is given to a new type of system called a course-support environment. In this type of system a database is integrated with Web-based tools and applications, and used to generate a course-support environment accessed via a standard Web browser. Some examples are given. The article moves on to an overview of various issues confronting the acceptance of computer communication systems in educational settings, and indicates some of the ways in which computer communications engineers will have to deal with those issue

Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page

LTE Spectrum Sharing Research Testbed: Integrated Hardware, Software, Network and Data

This paper presents Virginia Tech's wireless testbed supporting research on long-term evolution (LTE) signaling and radio frequency (RF) spectrum coexistence. LTE is continuously refined and new features released. As the communications contexts for LTE expand, new research problems arise and include operation in harsh RF signaling environments and coexistence with other radios. Our testbed provides an integrated research tool for investigating these and other research problems; it allows analyzing the severity of the problem, designing and rapidly prototyping solutions, and assessing them with standard-compliant equipment and test procedures. The modular testbed integrates general-purpose software-defined radio hardware, LTE-specific test equipment, RF components, free open-source and commercial LTE software, a configurable RF network and recorded radar waveform samples. It supports RF channel emulated and over-the-air radiated modes. The testbed can be remotely accessed and configured. An RF switching network allows for designing many different experiments that can involve a variety of real and virtual radios with support for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna operation. We present the testbed, the research it has enabled and some valuable lessons that we learned and that may help designing, developing, and operating future wireless testbeds.Comment: In Proceeding of the 10th ACM International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation & Characterization (WiNTECH), Snowbird, Utah, October 201

A framework for P2P application development

Although Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing has become increasingly popular over recent years, there still exist only a very small number of application domains that have exploited it on a large scale. This can be attributed to a number of reasons including the rapid evolution of P2P technologies, coupled with their often-complex nature. This paper describes an implemented abstraction framework that seeks to aid developers in building P2P applications. A selection of example P2P applications that have been developed using this framework are also presented

Rapid Prototyping for Virtual Environments

Development of Virtual Environment (VE) applications is challenging where application developers are required to have expertise in the target VE technologies along with the problem domain expertise. New VE technologies impose a significant learning curve to even the most experienced VE developer. The proposed solution relies on synthesis to automate the migration of a VE application to a new unfamiliar VE platform/technology. To solve the problem, the Common Scene Definition Framework (CSDF) is developed, that serves as a superset/model representation of the target virtual world. Input modules are developed to populate the framework with the capabilities of the virtual world imported from VRML 2.0 and X3D formats. The synthesis capability is built into the framework to synthesize the virtual world into a subset of VRML 2.0, VRML 1.0, X3D, Java3D, JavaFX, JavaME, and OpenGL technologies, which may reside on different platforms. Interfaces are designed to keep the framework extensible to different and new VE formats/technologies. The framework demonstrated the ability to quickly synthesize a working prototype of the input virtual environment in different VE formats