Control Infrastructure for a Pulsed Ion Accelerator

We report on updates to the accelerator controls for the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment II, a pulsed induction-type accelerator for heavy ions. The control infrastructure is built around a LabVIEW interface combined with an Apache Cassandra backend for data archiving. Recent upgrades added the storing and retrieving of device settings into the database, as well as ZeroMQ as a message broker that replaces LabVIEW's shared variables. Converting to ZeroMQ also allows easy access via other programming languages, such as Python

Simple network management protocol co- existence with hydrocarbon process automation communication real-time network

Hydrocarbon Process Automation Applications (HPAA) utilizes Real-time network connecting process instrumentations, controllers, and real-time logic control applications. Conventional practice is to dedicate a real-time network for process automation applications and prevent other applications from utilizing the same infrastructure. An important application that can help optimize, improve network performance, and provide rapid response time in network diagnostics and mitigation is Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). This paper addresses the co-existence of SNMP traffic with real-time applications. The impacts of activating this protocol with the real-time HPAA utilizing high speed Ethernet network design will be examined. Empirical data for an implemented Hydrocarbon process automation system will be used to illustrate the interdependency of application performance, traffic mix, and potential areas of improvements. The outcomes of this effort demonstrate the co-existence of SNMP with HPPA, given special considerations (i.e., bandwidth, number of applications, etc.)

How to Commission, Operate and Maintain a Large Future Accelerator Complex from Far Remote

A study on future large accelerators [1] has considered a facility, which is designed, built and operated by a worldwide collaboration of equal partner institutions, and which is remote from most of these institutions. The full range of operation was considered including commi-ssioning, machine development, maintenance, trouble shooting and repair. Experience from existing accele-rators confirms that most of these activities are already performed 'remotely'. The large high-energy physics ex-periments and astronomy projects, already involve inter-national collaborations of distant institutions. Based on this experience, the prospects for a machine operated remotely from far sites are encouraging. Experts from each laboratory would remain at their home institution but continue to participate in the operation of the machine after construction. Experts are required to be on site only during initial commissioning and for par-ticularly difficult problems. Repairs require an on-site non-expert maintenance crew. Most of the interventions can be made without an expert and many of the rest resolved with remote assistance. There appears to be no technical obstacle to controlling an accelerator from a distance. The major challenge is to solve the complex management and communication problems.Comment: ICALEPCS 2001 abstract ID No. FRBI001 invited talk submitting author F. Willeke 5 pages, 1 figur

Industrial Fieldbus Improvements in Power Distribution and Conducted Noise Immunity With No Extra Costs

Industrial distributed control continues the move toward networks at all levels. At lower levels, control networks provide flexibility, reliability, and low cost, although perhaps the simplest but most important advantage is the reduced volume of wiring. Powered fieldbuses offer particular notable benefits in system wiring simplification. Nevertheless, very few papers are dealing with the potentials and limitations in power distribution through the bus cable. Only a few of the existent fieldbus standards consider this possibility but often simply as an option without enough technical specifications. In fact, nobody talks about it, but power distribution through the bus and conducted noise disturbances are strongly related. This paper points out and analyzes these limitations and proposes a new low-cost fieldbus physical layer that enlarges power distribution capability of the bus and improves system robustness. We show an industrial application on water desalination plants and the very good results obtained owing to the fieldbus. Finally, we present electromagnetic compatibility test results that verify improvements against electrical fast transients on the sensor/actuator connection side as disturbances usually encountered in harsh-environment industrial applications

Safety Engineering with COTS components

Safety-critical systems are becoming more widespread, complex and reliant on software. Increasingly they are engineered through Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) (Commercial Off The Shelf) components to alleviate the spiralling costs and development time, often in the context of complex supply chains. A parallel increased concern for safety has resulted in a variety of safety standards, with a growing consensus that a safety life cycle is needed which is fully integrated with the design and development life cycle, to ensure that safety has appropriate influence on the design decisions as system development progresses. In this article we explore the application of an integrated approach to safety engineering in which assurance drives the engineering process. The paper re- ports on the outcome of a case study on a live industrial project with a view to evaluate: its suitability for application in a real-world safety engineering setting; its benefits and limitations in counteracting some of the difficulties of safety en- gineering with COTS components across supply chains; and, its effectiveness in generating evidence which can contribute directly to the construction of safety cases

MiniCPS: A toolkit for security research on CPS Networks

In recent years, tremendous effort has been spent to modernizing communication infrastructure in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) such as Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and related Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. While a great amount of research has been conducted on network security of office and home networks, recently the security of CPS and related systems has gained a lot of attention. Unfortunately, real-world CPS are often not open to security researchers, and as a result very few reference systems and topologies are available. In this work, we present MiniCPS, a CPS simulation toolbox intended to alleviate this problem. The goal of MiniCPS is to create an extensible, reproducible research environment targeted to communications and physical-layer interactions in CPS. MiniCPS builds on Mininet to provide lightweight real-time network emulation, and extends Mininet with tools to simulate typical CPS components such as programmable logic controllers, which use industrial protocols (Ethernet/IP, Modbus/TCP). In addition, MiniCPS defines a simple API to enable physical-layer interaction simulation. In this work, we demonstrate applications of MiniCPS in two example scenarios, and show how MiniCPS can be used to develop attacks and defenses that are directly applicable to real systems.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 code listin