Converged IP-over-standard ethernet progress control networks for hydrocarbon process automation applications controllers

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The maturity level of Internet Protocol (IP) and the emergence of standard Ethernet interfaces of Hydrocarbon Process Automation Application (HPAA) present a real opportunity to combine independent industrial applications onto an integrated IP based network platform. Quality of Service (QoS) for IP over Ethernet has the strength to regulate traffic mix and support timely delivery. The combinations of these technologies lend themselves to provide a platform to support HPAA applications across Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) networks. HPAA systems are composed of sensors, actuators, and logic solvers networked together to form independent control system network platforms. They support hydrocarbon plants operating under critical conditions that — if not controlled — could become dangerous to people, assets and the environment. This demands high speed networking which is triggered by the need to capture data with higher frequency rate at a finer granularity. Nevertheless, existing HPAA network infrastructure is based on unique autonomous systems, which has resulted in multiple, parallel and separate networks with limited interconnectivity supporting different functions. This created increased complexity in integrating various applications and resulted higher costs in the technology life cycle total ownership. To date, the concept of consolidating HPAA into a converged IP network over standard Ethernet has not yet been explored. This research aims to explore and develop the HPAA Process Control Systems (PCS) in a Converged Internet Protocol (CIP) using experimental and simulated networks case studies. Results from experimental and simulation work showed encouraging outcomes and provided a good argument for supporting the co-existence of HPAA and non-HPAA applications taking into consideration timeliness and reliability requirements. This was achieved by invoking priority based scheduling with the highest priority being awarded to PCS among other supported services such as voice, multimedia streams and other applications. HPAA can benefit from utilizing CIP over Ethernet by reducing the number of interdependent HPAA PCS networks to a single uniform and standard network. In addition, this integrated infrastructure offers a platform for additional support services such as multimedia streaming, voice, and data. This network‐based model manifests itself to be integrated with remote control system platform capabilities at the end user's desktop independent of space and time resulting in the concept of plant virtualization

A Low-Power CoAP for Contiki

Internet of Things devices will by and large be battery-operated, but existing application protocols have typically not been designed with power-efficiency in mind. In low-power wireless systems, power-efficiency is determined by the ability to maintain a low radio duty cycle: keeping the radio off as much as possible. We present an implementation of the IETF Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) for the Contiki operating system that leverages the ContikiMAC low-power duty cycling mechanism to provide power efficiency. We experimentally evaluate our low-power CoAP, demonstrating that an existing application layer protocol can be made power-efficient through a generic radio duty cycling mechanism. To the best of our knowledge, our CoAP implementation is the first to provide power-efficient operation through radio duty cycling. Our results question the need for specialized low-power mechanisms at the application layer, instead providing low-power operation only at the radio duty cycling layer

Enhancing wireless TCP a serialized-timer approach

IEEE INFOCOM Proceedings, 2010, p. 1-5In wireless networks, TCP performs unsatisfactorily since packet reordering and random losses may be falsely interpreted as congestive losses. This causes TCP to trigger fast retransmission and fast recovery spuriously, leading to under-utilization of available network resources. In this paper, we propose a novel TCP variant, known as TCP for noncongestive loss (TCP-NCL), to adapt TCP to wireless networks by using more reliable signals of packet loss and network overload for activating packet retransmission and congestion response, separately. TCP-NCL can thus serve as a unified solution for effective congestion control, sequencing control, and loss recovery. Different from the existing unified solutions, the modifications involved in the proposed variant are limited to sender-side TCP only, thereby facilitating possible future wide deployment. The two signals employed are the expirations of two serialized timers. A smart TCP sender model has been developed for optimizing the timer expiration periods. Our simulation studies reveal that TCP-NCL is robust against packet reordering as well as random packet loss while maintaining responsiveness against situations with purely congestive loss. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

TCP for Wireless Environments

Computer networks have experienced an explosive growth over the past few years, which has lead to some severe congestion problems. Reliable protocols like TCP works well in wired networks where loss occurs mostly because of congestion. However, in wireless networks, loss occurs because of bit rates and handoffs too. TCP responds all losses by congestion control and avoidance algorithms, which results in degradation of TCP\u27s End-To-End performance in wireless networks. This paper discusses different issues and problems regarding use of TCP in wireless networks and provides comprehensive survey of various schemes to improve performance of TCP in Wireless Networks

A simulation-based study of TCP performance over an Optical Burst Switched backbone with 802.11 access

13th Open European Summer School and IFIP TC6.6 Workshop, EUNICE 2007, Enschede, The Netherlands, July 18-20, 2007. ProceedingsThe combined effect of optical and wireless subnetworks in an hypothetical future scenario where core networks have evolved to the still prototype Optical Burst Switching (OBS) technology is an open research issue. This paper studies this hybrid scenario, in the particular case of 802.11 access, by reviewing the key aspects of OBS and 802.11 with an impact on the performance of TCP, and makes a simulation-based assessment of the relative influence of both technologies over the effective end-to-end behaviour of TCP.This work has been partly supported by the EU under the IST e-Photon/One+ project (FP6-IST-027497) and by the Spanish CAPITAL project (TEC2004-05622-C04-03).Publicad