Fault detection and isolation of malicious nodes in MIMO Multi-hop Control Networks

A MIMO Multi-hop Control Network (MCN) consists of a MIMO LTI system where the communication between sensors, actuators and computational units is supported by a (wireless) multi-hop communication network, and data flow is performed using scheduling and routing of sensing and actuation data. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions on the plant dynamics and on the communication protocol configuration such that the Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) problem of failures and malicious attacks to communication nodes can be solved.Comment: 6 page

Optimal co-design of control, scheduling and routing in multi-hop control networks

A Multi-hop Control Network consists of a plant where the communication between sensors, actuators and computational units is supported by a (wireless) multi-hop communication network, and data flow is performed using scheduling and routing of sensing and actuation data. Given a SISO LTI plant, we will address the problem of co-designing a digital controller and the network parameters (scheduling and routing) in order to guarantee stability and maximize a performance metric on the transient response to a step input, with constraints on the control effort, on the output overshoot and on the bandwidth of the communication channel. We show that the above optimization problem is a polynomial optimization problem, which is generally NP-hard. We provide sufficient conditions on the network topology, scheduling and routing such that it is computationally feasible, namely such that it reduces to a convex optimization problem.Comment: 51st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2012. Accepted for publication as regular pape

Análise do impacto da comunicação em redes wirelesshart no desempenho de sistemas de controle

Este trabalho analisa o uso do protocolo WirelessHART para a implementação de sistemas de controle em laço fechado. São discutidas possíveis arquiteturas de implementação de laços de controle, as quais se diferem basicamente pelo local na arquitetura do sistema de controle em rede em que o controlador será executado. Optou-se pela análise do comportamento do protocolo WirelessHART numa arquitetura que considera o módulo de controle localizado num dispositivo host, o qual se comunica via HART-UDP com o gateway da rede. Para a análise da proposta desta dissertação foram descritos os mecanismos necessários para a realização do laço de controle sobre uma rede WirelessHART real, em um ambiente que apresenta todas as características de uma instalação industrial. Os resultados obtidos mostram que, com a arquitetura proposta, o laço de controle apresenta latências não determinísticas. Para a realização deste trabalho, foram apresentados dois estudos de caso: (i) o controle de uma válvula comumente utilizada na indústria de petróleo; (ii) e um processo simulado, que considera um controlador baseado em eventos, onde o sinal de controle é calculado de acordo com os tempos de comunicação permitidos pela rede entre o controlador e o processo. Os resultados obtidos mostram que é possível efetuar controle apesar dos atrasos ocasionados pela rede, desde que sejam levados em conta estes atrasos no cálculo do sinal de controle, podendo assim mostrar há degradação no desempenho do sistema sob controle.This work analyzes the use of WirelessHART protocol for the implementation of closed-loop control systems. It discusses possible architectures for implementing control loops, which differ by the location where the controller is executing. For the performance evaluation of the WirelessHART protocol behavior, an architecture that considers the control module located in a device, which communicates via Hart-UDP with the network gateway. The Experimental evaluations presented in this dissertation were performed in a setting that has all the characteristics of an industrial installation. The results showed that in the proposed architecture, the control loop has not deterministic latencies. Two case studies were carried on: (i) the control of a valve commonly used in oil and gas industrial applications; (ii) and a simulated process that considers an event-based controller where the control signal is calculated according to the communication time allowed by the network between the controller and the process. The results show that it is possible to perform control despite network delays, when taking into account the delays in the calculation of the control signal

Scalable scheduling algorithms for wireless networked control systems

In this paper, we address the problem of designing scalable scheduling and routing policies over a time-triggered multi-hop control network, when closing a considerable number of control loops on the same network. The key idea is to formally define by means of regular languages the set of schedules for each control loop that satisfy a given control specification, and to exploit operators on regular languages to compute the set of schedules for the whole system. In order to test our methodology, we address a mineral floatation control problem derived from the Boliden (a swedish mining company) mine in Garpenberg, and propose a scheduling solution that can be implemented on systems compliant with communication protocols for wireless networks (e.g. the WirelessHART specification).“© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”QC 2012021