An application of an ethernet based protocol for communication and control in automated manufacturing

The exchange of information in the industrial environment is essential in order to achieve complete integration and control of manufacturing processes. At present the majority of devices present in the shop floor environment are still used as stand alone machines. They do not take advantage of the possibilities offered by a communication link to improve the manufacturing process. The subject of this research has been centered on the development of a simple, flexible and inexpensive support system for communication and control of manufacturing processes. As a result, a system with these features has been proposed and implemented on a simulated workcell. The area footwear manufacturing was chosen for modelling the workcell. The components of the manufacturing support system were developed using an object oriented approach which allowed modularity and software reuse. In order to achieve communication between the components, a communication protocol was developed following the process defined in the rapid protocol implementation framework. Ethernet was selected for implementing the lower levels of the protocol. Java, a new object oriented programming language used for the implementation of the system, showed that it could became a promising language for the implementation of manufacturing applications. In particular the platform independence feature of the language allows the immediate porting of applications to systems with different features. The manufacturing cell simulation had shown that the times associated with the manufacturing support system operations are compatible for its use in applications where the response times are in the order of one second

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Decentralization of multimedia content in a heterogeneous environment

The aim of this study has been the decentralization of multimedia content in a heterogeneous environment. The environment consisted of the research networks connecting the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Finnish University and Research Network. The European Organization for Nuclear Research produces multimedia content which can be used as studying material all over the world. The Web University pilot in the European Organization for Nuclear Research has been developing a multimedia content delivery service for years. Delivering the multimedia content requires plenty of capacity from the network infrastructure. Different content of the material can have different demands for the network. In a heterogeneous environment, like the Internet, fulfilling all the demands can be a problem. Several methods exist to improve the situation. Decentralization of the content is one of the most popular solutions. Mirroring and caching are the main methods for decentralization. Recently developed content delivery networks are using both of these techniques to satisfy the demands of the content. The practical application consisted of measurements of the network connection between the multimedia server in the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Finnish University and Research Network, planning and building a decentralization system for the multimedia content. After the measurements, it became clear that there is n o need for decentralization of the multimedia content for users that are able to utilise the Finnish University and Research Network. There could be double today's usage, and still there would be no problems with the capacity. However, the European Organization for Nuclear Research routes all traffic that comes from outside research networks through a gateway in the USA. This affects every connection that is made from Finland: users are not able to use the international connection offered by the Finnish University and Research Network. For these users I designed and built a simple, modular and portable decentralization system

PICSEL: Portable ICS Extensible Lab

Trabalho de projeto de mestrado, Segurança Informática, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2020Critical infrastructures such as electric power grids, nuclear plants, oil and gas refineries, transportations systems or pharmaceutical industries, play an increasingly important role in our lives due to technological advancement and the precision industry. Traditionally, most of these infrastructures, also called industrial control systems (ICS), are large-scale cyber-physical systems (CPS) which all use supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). Over recent years, malicious actors have realized the importance and impact of these infrastructures. Combining this with the deprivation of security features in ICS resulted in a large quantity of high value targets just waiting to be exploited. Since these systems are based on equipment with a really long lifetime and, in most of the cases, have an extremely high availability requirement, its important to, somehow, gather information and perform security tests in order to protect these infrastructures, without compromising a live operation. Normally these infrastructures are very complex and often have a remarkable diversity of equipment, communication protocols and transmission technologies. This thesis presents a portable testbed, PICSEL, which was designed and developed to achieve the following goals: to be a portable testbed testing existing exploits and new security solutions whilst exploring new vulnerabilities within the equipment or the environment. Several requirements were considered in the design of the testbed: for instance, choosing the equipment that allowed for more environment configurations; choosing power supplies that support additional equipment; and designing a static electrical diagram based on each device’s requirements. With these requirements, the testbed must be able to support different types of equipment and architectures, allowing for applications in multiple industries, inside which it can be easily reconfigured. The thesis describes the testbed architecture and discusses the design decisions, presenting two test scenarios that were studied and implemented using PICSEL. In each of these test scenarios, different attacks were performed validating each of the PICSEL goals. Testing known vulnerabilities, testing exploits in the wild and exporting information from PICSEL equipment to an external tool were very important steps to validate the results. Therefore, this thesis provides proof of concept confirming the key value of a modular and reconfigurable testbed, PICSEL

Kommunikation und Bildverarbeitung in der Automation

In diesem Open Access-Tagungsband sind die besten Beiträge des 11. Jahreskolloquiums "Kommunikation in der Automation" (KommA 2020) und des 7. Jahreskolloquiums "Bildverarbeitung in der Automation" (BVAu 2020) enthalten. Die Kolloquien fanden am 28. und 29. Oktober 2020 statt und wurden erstmalig als digitale Webveranstaltung auf dem Innovation Campus Lemgo organisiert. Die vorgestellten neuesten Forschungsergebnisse auf den Gebieten der industriellen Kommunikationstechnik und Bildverarbeitung erweitern den aktuellen Stand der Forschung und Technik. Die in den Beiträgen enthaltenen anschauliche Anwendungsbeispiele aus dem Bereich der Automation setzen die Ergebnisse in den direkten Anwendungsbezug

Development of Customized Distribution Automation System (DAS) for Secure Fault Isolation in Low Voltage Distribution System

A Customized SCADA based RTU for service substation and customer service substation is developed by using the open loop concept for the distribution networks. Currently, the SCADA system in the low distribution system implemented by TNB only focuses on alarm monitoring. SSO has to operate the control functions at the HMI side. The operator needs to analyze the situation and to make appropriate actions. A Customized SCADA is built to provide automatic fault isolation for low distribution system. In this chapter, the proposed methodology is summarized with the experimental results and conclusion based on the results is also highlighted