Secure Precise Clock Synchronization for Interconnected Body Area Networks

Secure time synchronization is a paramount service for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) constituted by multiple interconnected body area networks (BANs). We propose a novel approach to securely and efficiently synchronize nodes at BAN level and/or WSN level. Each BAN develops its own notion of time. To this effect, the nodes of a BAN synchronize with their BAN controller node. Moreover, controller nodes of different BANs cooperate to agree on a WSN global and/or to transfer UTC time. To reduce the number of exchanged synchronization messages, we use an environmental-aware time prediction algorithm. The performance analysis in this paper shows that our approach exhibits very advanced security, accuracy, precision, and low-energy trade-off. For comparable precision, our proposal outstands related clock synchronization protocols in energy efficiency and risk of attacks. These results are based on computations

D-SLATS: Distributed Simultaneous Localization and Time Synchronization

Through the last decade, we have witnessed a surge of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and with that a greater need to choreograph their actions across both time and space. Although these two problems, namely time synchronization and localization, share many aspects in common, they are traditionally treated separately or combined on centralized approaches that results in an ineffcient use of resources, or in solutions that are not scalable in terms of the number of IoT devices. Therefore, we propose D-SLATS, a framework comprised of three different and independent algorithms to jointly solve time synchronization and localization problems in a distributed fashion. The First two algorithms are based mainly on the distributed Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) whereas the third one uses optimization techniques. No fusion center is required, and the devices only communicate with their neighbors. The proposed methods are evaluated on custom Ultra-Wideband communication Testbed and a quadrotor, representing a network of both static and mobile nodes. Our algorithms achieve up to three microseconds time synchronization accuracy and 30 cm localization error

System-on-chip architecture for secure sub-microsecond synchronization systems

213 p.En esta tesis, se pretende abordar los problemas que conlleva la protección cibernética del Precision Time Protocol (PTP). Éste es uno de los protocolos de comunicación más sensibles de entre los considerados por los organismos de estandarización para su aplicación en las futuras Smart Grids o redes eléctricas inteligentes. PTP tiene como misión distribuir una referencia de tiempo desde un dispositivo maestro al resto de dispositivos esclavos, situados dentro de una misma red, de forma muy precisa. El protocolo es altamente vulnerable, ya que introduciendo tan sólo un error de tiempo de un microsegundo, pueden causarse graves problemas en las funciones de protección del equipamiento eléctrico, o incluso detener su funcionamiento. Para ello, se propone una nueva arquitectura System-on-Chip basada en dispositivos reconfigurables, con el objetivo de integrar el protocolo PTP y el conocido estándar de seguridad MACsec para redes Ethernet. La flexibilidad que los modernos dispositivos reconfigurables proporcionan, ha sido aprovechada para el diseño de una arquitectura en la que coexisten procesamiento hardware y software. Los resultados experimentales avalan la viabilidad de utilizar MACsec para proteger la sincronización en entornos industriales, sin degradar la precisión del protocolo

When Operation Technology Meets Information Technology: Challenges and Opportunities

Industry 4.0 has revolutionized process innovation while facilitating and encouraging many new possibilities. The objective of Industry 4.0 is the radical enhancement of productivity, a goal that presupposes the integration of Operational Technology (OT) networks with Information Technology (IT) networks, which were hitherto isolated. This disruptive approach is enabled by adopting several emerging technologies in Enterprise processes. In this manuscript, we discuss what we believe to be one of the main challenges preventing the full employment of Industry 4.0, namely, the integration of Operation Technology networking and Information Technology networking. We discuss the technical challenges alongside the potential tools while providing a state-of-the-art use case scenario. We showcase a possible solution based on the Asset Administration Shell approach, referring to the use case of camera synchronization for collaborative tasks

Evaluation of IEEE 802.1 Time Sensitive Networking Performance for Microgrid and Smart Grid Power System Applications

Proliferation of distributed energy resources and the importance of smart energy management has led to increased interest in microgrids. A microgrid is an area of the grid that can be disconnected and operated independently from the main grid when required and can generate some or all of its own energy needs with distributed energy resources and battery storage. This allows for the microgrid area to continue operating even when the main grid is unavailable. In addition, often a microgrid can utilize waste heat from energy generation to drive thermal loads, further improving energy utilization. This leads to increased reliability and overall efficiency in the microgrid area.As microgrids (and by extension the smart grid) become more widespread, new methods of communication and control are required to aid in management of many different distributed entities. One such communication architecture that may prove useful is the set of IEEE 802.1 Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) standards. These standards specify improvements and new capabilities for LAN based communication networks that previously made them unsuitable for widespread deployment in a power system setting. These standards include specifications for low latency guarantees, clock synchronization, data frame redundancy, and centralized system administration. These capabilities were previously available on proprietary or application specific solutions. However, they will now be available as part of the Ethernet standard, enabling backwards compatibility with existing network architecture and support with future advances.Two of the featured standards, IEEE 802.1AS (governing time-synchronization) and IEEE 802.1Qbv (governing time aware traffic shaping), will be tested and evaluated for their potential utility in power systems and microgrid applications. These tests will measure the latency achievable using TSN over a network at various levels of congestion and compare these results with UDP and TCP protocols. In addition, the ability to use synchronized clocks to generate waveforms for microgrid inverter synchronization will be explored

A secure communication framework for wireless sensor networks

Today, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are no longer a nascent technology and future networks, especially Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) will integrate more sensor-based systems into a variety of application scenarios. Typical application areas include medical, environmental, military, and commercial enterprises. Providing security to this diverse set of sensor-based applications is necessary for the healthy operations of the overall system because untrusted entities may target the proper functioning of applications and disturb the critical decision-making processes by injecting false information into the network. One way to address this issue is to employ en-route-filtering-based solutions utilizing keys generated by either static or dynamic key management schemes in the WSN literature. However, current schemes are complicated for resource-constrained sensors as they utilize many keys and more importantly as they transmit many keying messages in the network, which increases the energy consumption of WSNs that are already severely limited in the technical capabilities and resources (i.e., power, computational capacities, and memory) available to them. Nonetheless, further improvements without too much overhead are still possible by sharing a dynamically created cryptic credential. Building upon this idea, the purpose of this thesis is to introduce an efficient and secure communication framework for WSNs. Specifically, three protocols are suggested as contributions using virtual energies and local times onboard the sensors as dynamic cryptic credentials: (1) Virtual Energy-Based Encryption and Keying (VEBEK); (2) TIme-Based DynamiC Keying and En-Route Filtering (TICK); (3) Secure Source-Based Loose Time Synchronization (SOBAS) for WSNs.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Copeland, John; Committee Co-Chair: Beyah, Raheem; Committee Member: Li, Geoffrey; Committee Member: Owen, Henry; Committee Member: Zegura, Ellen; Committee Member: Zhang, Fumi

Seamless connectivity:investigating implementation challenges of multibroker MQTT platform for smart environmental monitoring

Abstract. This thesis explores the performance and efficiency of MQTT-based infrastructure Internet of Things (IoT) sensor networks for smart environment. The study focuses on the impact of network latency and broker switching in distributed multi-broker MQTT platforms. The research involves three case studies: a cloud-based multi-broker deployment, a Local Area Network (LAN)-based multi-broker deployment, and a multi-layer LAN network-based multi-broker deployment. The research is guided by three objectives: quantifying and analyzing the latency of multi-broker MQTT platforms; investigating the benefits of distributed brokers for edge users; and assessing the impact of switching latency at applications. This thesis ultimately seeks to answer three key questions related to network and switching latency, the merits of distributed brokers, and the influence of switching latency on the reliability of end-user applications

Energy-aware strategy for data forwarding in IoT ecosystem

The Internet of Things (IoT) is looming technology rapidly attracting many industries and drawing research attention. Although the scale of IoT-applications is very large, the capabilities of the IoT-devices are limited, especially in terms of energy. However, various research works have been done to alleviate these shortcomings, but the schemes introduced in the literature are complex and difficult to implement in practical scenarios. Therefore, considering the energy consumption of heterogeneous nodes in IoT eco-system, a simple energy-efficient routing technique is proposed. The proposed system has also employed an SDN controller that acts as a centralized manager to control and monitor network services, there by restricting the access of selfish nodes to the network. The proposed system constructs an analytical algorithm that provides reliable data transmission operations and controls energy consumption using a strategic mechanism where the path selection process is performed based on the remaining energy of adjacent nodes located in the direction of the destination node. The proposed energy-efficient data forwarding mechanism is compared with the existing AODV routing technique. The simulation result demonstrates that the protocol is superior to AODV in terms of packet delivery rate, throughput, and end-to-end delay