A Review on Low Power Implementation for Networked Control Industrial Applications

Ahmad Mahfouz Marzouk

ID: 800-112-783 EENG 556: Networked Control Systems Electronics Engineering Department School of Sciences and Engineering The American University in Cairo

Submitted to Dr. Ramez Daoud

Abstract With the knowledge that Power consumption is a critical design issue in networked control systems, this review study discusses various issues with low power implementations of Networked Control Systems (NCS) in industrial automation. The network protocols are considered to be the most important aspect of the system. Different state-of-the-art types of communication systems, wired they are or wireless, that are used in real-time control systems are introduced as found in literature.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Reviewing the current trends in power-aware and low power implementation of industrial applications shows the great potential of wireless networks to be used to communicate the system nodes. Beside the flexibility, reliability and portability, the implementation cost is an important factor that tilted the balance against fieldbus communication systems for the latest industrial applications. Nevertheless, the nondeterministic and concurrent behavior of distributed control systems makes their design and analysis more complex than the counter fieldbus protocols supporting real-time control. With the focus of almost all literature studies on various network parameters other than power, such as reliability, resiliency, latency, jitter and delay, it was difficult to find a definite, specific wired protocol or implementation which is power driven in industrial automation. However, not only wireless sensor and actuators Networks (WSAN) are considered in this review of power-aware industrial implementations but also the state-of-the-art wired control networks are studied focusing mainly on industrial Ethernet, with all its different co-existing forms and solutionsvendors; PROFINET, Ethernet Powerlink, Ethernet/IP, Modbus-TCP, etc. II. WIRED IMPLEMENTATION

attention as a support for industrial communication. Many manufacturing companies maintain separate networks to support their factory floor operations and business operations shown in Figure 1. Over the years, these networks were developed to respond to the different information flows and control requirements involved with manufacturing processes. The control-level network connects control and monitoring devices, including programmable automation controllers, PCbased controllers, I/O racks, drives, and human-machine interfaces (HMIs). This network, which has not been based upon standard Ethernet and IP in the past, requires a router or, in most cases, a gateway to translate application-specific protocols to Ethernet-based protocols. This translation lets information pass between the control network on the factory floor and the corporate network infrastructure, but has limited functionality and bandwidth, and requires significant effort to keep up to date.

A. Industrial Ethernet Implementation In spite of the early attempts to use Ethernet technology in the industrial context, only recently has it attracted a lot of

Figure 1. Traditional Proprietary Fieldbus Architecture

Figure 2.

Traditional Proprietary Fieldbus Architecture

Traditionally, interconnectivity between various devices on the factory floor, e.g. sensors, actuators, HMIs, controllers, was achieved with a variety of fieldbuses such as DeviceNet, Profibus, and Modbus. Each fieldbus has specific power, cable, and communication requirements, depending on the factory application it supports. This has led to a replication of multiple networks in the same space and the need to have multiple sets of spares, skills, and support programs. Moreover, there are other several advantages behind the turning to Ethernet technology as a means to interconnect field devices to the first level of automation in addition to the previously mentioned major issue. To name a few of such advantages: Tremendously higher speeds ( 10 Gb/s is now currently offered ) than other fieldbuses networks such as the previously mentioned Profibus, DeviceNet, or CAN. Cost feasibility due to the huge market for Ethernet and the associated protocols IP, UDP, and TCP that costs of interface circuits have been drastically lowered.

and actuatotrs have to be controlled in limited space and consume adequate power under the constraints of real-time and reliability. Here comes the role of wireless systems in such demanding industrial environments. A cutting-edge technology that tends to be the perfect solution for power-aware and flexible applications is Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSAN). WSAN, also addressed as Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSN) [9], are used to improve control system efficiency through several functions that are distributed over different wireless nodes, where the wireless communication channels provide increased flexibility, reliability and portability. In a Networked Control System (NCS) allowing mobile-communicated system nodes, the sensor, controller and actuator functions are distributed and can be assigned to other nodes according to specified criteria such as power consumption optimization, time constraints and delay reduction [2]. Additional to the aforementioned advantage of WSAN, it brings self-organization, rapid deployment, flexibility, and inherent intelligent-processing capability [9]. Hence, WSAN plays a vital role in creating a highly reliable and self-healing industrial automation system that rapidly responds to real-time events with appropriate actions. On the other hand, it is not an easy task to implement an automation solution using WSAN systems; unique technical challenges and design principles are need to be faced in terms of hardware and software developments and system architecture beside protocol design. A comprehensive addressing for the most important challenges and design goals are given in table 1. It is noteworthy that WSAN demand considerable research to focus on overcoming the deficiencies of energy consumption of the sensor nodes through power management schemes regarding resource allocation, routing and low-energy consumption. This requires various power conservation mechanisms to be applied on the different network layers as addressed in [2] basically in order to reduce the power consumption at different levels.

Furthermore, Industrial Ethernet can unite a companys administrative, control-level, and device-level networks to run over a single network infrastructure instead of using architectures composed of multiple separate networks. Recognizing that Ethernet is the leading networking solution, many industry organizations are porting the traditional fieldbus architectures to Industrial Ethernet. Simply, it applies the Ethernet standards developed for data communication to manufacturing control networks, shown in Figure 2 using IEEE standards-based equipment, organizations can migrate all or part of their factory operations to an Ethernet environment at the pace they wish. III. WIRELESS IMPLEMENTATOINS

Given the novel characterizations for modern factory facilities with highly flexible manufacturing cells and highly dynamic processes, where clusters of fixed or moving sensors

TABLE I.

CHALLENGES VERSUS DESIGN GOALS IN WSAN [9]

In this review, wireless network protocols are addressed as a most weighted aspect in an industrial implementation for an NCS. Nevertheless, the different design and technical aspects toward the WSAN implementation are classified in an elegant manner combining the most crucial issues as follows [9]: 1. Hardware development; where low-power and low-cost sensor-node, with its different components including the sensor, the transceiver, the power source and the processor, should be adopted for the implementation. Additionally, energy-harvesting technique is an important aspect to be considered affecting the system power efficiency and the lifetime of the whole WSANs. Finally, the radio technologies to be used in such noisy and interfering environment. Software development; where the regularly important aspects toward delivering a user-friendly yet reliable system are required, starting from application programming interface level to the high-level system installation and commissioning. Protocol design; where the network architecture is discussed to reach a scalable design that is of primary importance in an industrial application. In addition, the design of an optimized cross-layer technique is also of primary important in such interdependent system layers.

supported by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard which provides asynchronous and synchronous (through beacons) media access. The advantage of the asynchronous MAC algorithm is that it facilitates scalability and network auto-configuration; however, it does not fully guarantee time transmission bounds.[4] Moreover, it supports star topology, cluster tree topology, and peer-to-peer topology that benefits industrial control and monitoring; as it can provide reliability by multipath routing. C. WirelessHART: WirelessHART is another wireless network protocol which consumes less power than systems supported by IEEE 802.11. It is an extension of the HART protocol and is specifically designed for process monitoring and control. The technology employs IEEE 802.15.4-based radio, frequency hopping, redundant data paths, and retry mechanisms. WirelessHART networks utilize mesh networking, in which each device is able to transmit its own data as well as relay information from other devices in the network [10]. D. Ultrawideband: UWB is a short-range wireless-communication technologysending data in the form of very short periodic impulses. The initial applications of UWB include multimedia and personal area networking. Although UWB-based industrial applications have gained recent attention, it is not a viable approach for communication over longer distances or measuring data from unsafe zone. This is simply due to the high peak energy of pulses. Besides, serious current challenges are occurring against this technology such as hardware development, dealing with MAC and multipath interference, and understanding propagation characteristics. However, the UWB is advantageous as a result of the following: Good localization capabilities. Possibility to share previously allocated radiofrequency bands by hiding signals under noise floor. Ability to transmit high data rates with low power. Good security characteristics due to the unique mode of operation. Ability to cope with multipath environments.

2.

3.

Reaching this point, the most applied standardization related to WSANs are briefly addressed as follows. A. Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11e: Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11e EDCA (Enhanced Distributed Channel Access) have been discussed in literature, [1], to implement control systems. The results show that these technologies allow to fullfil with real-time constrains in industrial applications for less than 10 nodes and sample periods upper than 10 ms. B. ZigBee: ZigBee technology is a wireless networking protocol targeted towards automation and remote control applications. It is advantageous for its low data rate, low power consumption, low cost. ZigBee sits below Bluetooth in terms of data rate; 250kbps at 2.4GHz while that of Bluetooth is 1Mbps. Zigbee is

IV.

CONCLUSION

In this study, the most recent and latest industrial implementations for power-aware Networked Control Systems are introduced. These implementations are classified mainly into wired and wireless techniques. The most famous and lately hugely used wired technique is Industrial Ethernet. Mainly it differs that IT-based Ethernet by its deterministic behavior to accommodate the real-time requirements by the industrial NCS applications. The wireless techniques show high potential in both research and industry. With the consequent advancement in research and development for wireless communication protocols and technologies, such as the Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks system, wireless implementations are reaching reliability and resilience of wired techniques. Not to forget the advancement in power reduction techniques in the wireless implementations which increase the advantage of wireless against wired in the foreseen future. REFERENCES
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