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Connected vehicles can make roads traffic safer and more efficient, but require the mobile networks to handle time-critical applications. Using the MONROE mobile broadband measurement testbed we conduct a multi-access measurement study on buses. The objective is to understand what network performance connected vehicles can expect in today's mobile networks, in terms of transaction times and availability. The goal is also to understand to what extent access to several operators in parallel can improve communication performance. In our measurement experiments we repeatedly transfer warning messages from moving buses to a stationary server. We triplicate the messages and always perform three transactions in parallel over three different cellular operators. This creates a dataset with which we can compare the operators in an objective way and with which we can study the potential for multi-access. In this paper we use the triple-access dataset to evaluate single-access selection strategies, where one operator is chosen for each transaction. We show that if we have access to three operators and for each transaction choose the operator with best access technology and best signal quality then we can significantly improve availability and transaction times compared to the individual operators. The median transaction time improves with 6% compared to the best single operator and with 61% compared to the worst single operator. The 90-percentile transaction time improves with 23% compared to the best single operator and with 65% compared to the worst single operator.

Today video and TV distribution dominate Internet traffic and the increasing demand for high-bandwidth multimedia services puts pressure on Internet service providers. In this paper we simulate TV distribution with time-shift and investigate the effect of introducing a local cache close to the viewers. We study what impact TV program popularity, program set size, cache replacement policy and other factors have on the caching efficiency. The simulation results show that introducing a local cache close to the viewers significantly reduces the network load from TV-on-Demand services. By caching 4% of the program volume we can decrease the peak load during prime time by almost 50%. We also show that the TV program type and how program popularity changes over time can have a big influence on cache hit ratios and the resulting link loads

Internet traffic volumes continue to grow at a great rate, now pushed by video and TV distribution in the networks. This brings up the need for traffic engineering mechanisms to better control the traffic. The objective of traffic engineering is to avoid congestion in the network and make good use of available resources by controlling and optimising the routing function. The challenge for traffic engineering in IP networks is to cope with the dynamics of Internet traffic demands. Today, the main alternative for intra-domain traffic engineering in IP networks is to use different methods for setting the weights in the routing protocols OSPF and IS-IS. In this paper we revisit the weight setting approach to traffic engineering but with focus on robustness. We propose I-balanced weight settings that route the traffic on the shortest paths possible but make sure that no link is utilised to more than a given level I. This gives efficient routing of traffic and controlled spare capacity to handle unpredictable changes in traffic. We present a heuristic search method for finding I-balanced weight settings and show that it works well in real network scenarios

IPTV, where television is distributed over the Internet Protocol in a single operator network, has become popular and widespread. Many telecom and broadband companies have become TV providers and distribute TV channels using multicast over their backbone networks. IPTV also means an evolution to time-shifted television where viewers now often can choose to watch the programs at any time. However, distributing individual TV streams to each viewer requires a lot of bandwidth and is a big challenge for TV operators. In this paper we present an empirical IPTV workload model, simulate IPTV distribution with time-shift, and show that local caching can limit the bandwidth requirements significantly.

The aging population and the increasing healthcare cost in hospitals are spurring the advent of remote health monitoring systems. Advances in physiological sensing devices and the emergence of reliable low-power wireless network technologies have enabled the design of remote health monitoring systems. The next generation Internet, commonly referred to as Internet of Things (IoT), depicts a world populated by devices that are able to sense, process and react via the Internet. Thus, we envision health monitoring systems that support Internet connection and use this connectivity to enable better and more reliable services. This paper presents an overview on existing health monitoring systems, considering the IoT vision. We focus on recent trends and the development of health monitoring systems in terms of: (1) health parameters, (2) frameworks, (3) wireless communication, and (4) security issues. We also identify the main limitations, requirements and advantages within these systems.

Sensor data are traveling from sensors to a remote server, data is analysed remotely in a distributed manner, and health status of a user is presented in real-time. This paper presents a generic system-level framework for a self-served health monitoring system through the Internet of Things (IoT) to facilities an efficient sensor data management.

This paper deals with a way to probabilistically guarantee reliable packet delivery in WirelessHART based networks suitable for industrial control systems. We propose a new scheduling scheme, called Iterative Probabilistic Scheduling with Adaptive Relaying (IPS-AR), which consists of a static part (IPS) and a dynamic part (AR). IPS takes into account the channel characteristics and exploits relaying to achieve a minimum reliability threshold as requested by the supported industrial application. In the AR part, each relay node decides the packet to be sent based on online assessment of both the number of consecutive errors experienced by previous packets belonging to the same flow, as well as the number of copies of the packet currently available at the other relay nodes. This enables IPS-AR to achieve the desired reliability level while using the available re-sources in terms of time and bandwidth more efficiently.

Many enterprise solutions today are built upon complex distributed systems which are accessible to the users globally. Due to this global access, the security of the host platforms becomes critical. The platform administrators use security automation techniques such as those provided by Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) standards to protect the systems from the vulnerabilities that are reported daily; furthermore, they are responsible for keeping their systems compliant to the relevant security recommendations (governmental or industrial). Additionally, third party audit and certification processes are used to increase user trust in enterprise solutions. However, traditional audit and certification mechanisms are not continuous, that is, not frequent enough to deal with the daily reported vulnerabilities, and for that matter even auditors expect platform administrators to keep the systems updated. As a result, the end user is also forced to trust the platform administrators about the latest state of the platform. In this paper we develop an automated security audit and certification system (ASArP) which can be used by platform users or by third party auditors. We use security automation techniques for continuous monitoring of the platform security posture and make the results trustworthy by using trusted computing (TCG) techniques. The prototype development of ASArP validates the implementation feasibility; it also provides performance benchmarks which show that the ASArP based audit and certification can be done much more frequently (e.g. daily or weekly). The feasibility of ASArP based continuous audits is significantly better than traditional platform audits which are dependent on the physical presence of the auditors, thus making frequent audits much more expensive and operationally infeasible.

In many new distributed systems paradigms such a cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), electronic banking, etc. the security of the host platforms is very critical which is managed by the platform owner. The platform administrators use security automation techniques such as those provided by Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) standards to ensure that the outsourced platforms are set up correctly and follow the security recommendations (governmental or industry). However, the remote platform users still have to trust the platform administrators. The third party security audits, used to shift the required user trust from the platform owner to a trusted entity, are scheduled and are not very frequent to deal with the daily reported vulnerabilities which can be exploited by the attackers. In this paper we propose a remote platform evaluation mechanism which can be used by the remote platform users themselves, or by the auditors to perform frequent platform security audits for the platform users. We analyze the existing SCAP and trusted computing (TCG) standards for our solution, identify their shortcomings, and suggest ways to integrate them. Our proposed platform security evaluation framework uses the synergy of TCG and SCAP to address the limitations of each technology when used separately

In this paper we consider the security and trustimplications of virtual machine (VM) migration from one cloudplatform to the other in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud service model. We show how to extend and complement previous Trusted Computing techniques for secure VM launchto also cover the VM migration case. In particular, we propose a Trust_Token based VM migration protocol which guarantees that the user VM can only be migrated to a trustworthy cloud platform. Different from previous schemes, our solution is not dependent on an active (on-line) trusted third party. We show how our proposed mechanisms fulfill major security and trust requirements for secure VM migration in cloud environments.

In this paper we consider the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud model which allows cloud users to run their own virtual machines (VMs) on available cloud computing resources. IaaS gives enterprises the possibility to outsource their process workloads with minimal effort and expense. However, one major problem with existing approaches of cloud leasing, is that the users can only get contractual guarantees regarding the integrity of the offered platforms. The fact that the IaaS user himself or herself cannot verify the provider promised cloud platform integrity, is a security risk which threatens to prevent the IaaS business in general. In this paper we address this issue and propose a novel secure VM launch protocol using Trusted Computing techniques. This protocol allows the cloud IaaS users to securely bind the VM to a trusted computer configuration such that the clear text VM only will run on a platform that has been booted into a trustworthy state. This capability builds user confidence and can serve as an important enabler for creating trust in public clouds. We evaluate the feasibility of our proposed protocol via a full scale system implementation and perform a system security analysis.

In this paper we address the issues of timeliness and transmission reliability of existing industrial communication standards. We combine a Forward Error Correction coding schemeon the Medium Access Control layer with a lightweight routing protocol to form an IEEE 802.15.4-conformable solution, whichcan be implemented into already existing hardware without violating the standard. After laying the theoretical foundations,we conduct a performance evaluation of the proposed solution.The results show a substantial gain in reliability and reducedlatency, compared to the uncoded transmissions, as well ascommon Wireless Sensor Network routing protocols.

The use of wireless communication technologies in the industry offer severaladvantages. One advantage is the ability to deploy sensors where they previously could noteasily be deployed, for instance on parts that rotate. To use wireless communication in industrialcontrol loops, demands on reliability and latency requirements has to be met. This in anenvironment that may be harsh for radio communication. This work presents a reliable, lowlatency wireless communication system. The system is used in a wireless thyristor control loopin a hydro power plant generator. The wireless communication is based on Bluetooth radiomodules. The work shows a latency analysis together with empirical hardware based latencyand packet error rate measurements. The background noise of a hydro power plant station isalso investigated. The average latency between the Bluetooth modules for the proposed systemis 5.09 ms. The packet error rate is 0.00288 for the wireless low latency control system deployedin a hydro power plant.

This paper presents a time synchronized wireless ECG sensor network with reliable data communication. Wireless ECG systems are a popular research area where several research groups have presented point-to-point solutions. Alongside the wireless ECG research, the wireless sensor network research has created an increasing interest for secure, low power and predictable network applications. Combining these research areas is a natural step for the evolution of secure wireless monitoring of physiological parameters. In this study the Bluetooth radio standard has been chosen for its versatility. This paper focuses on both the hardware and the software development for a functional multihop ECG network using Bluetooth. The presented wireless ECG network is reliable up to link loss and is easily configured to send more or different types of signals. The system has been tested and verified for secure multihop communication.

To keep internet based services available despite inevitable local internet and power outages, their data must be replicated to one or more other sites. For most systems using the store-and-forward architecture, data loss can also be prevented by using end-to-end acknowledgements. So far we have not found any sufficiently good solutions for replication of data in store-and-forward systems without acknowledgements and with geographically separated system nodes. We therefore designed a new replication protocol, which could take advantage of the lack of a global order between the messages and the acceptance of a slightly higher risk for duplicated deliveries than existing protocols. We tested a proof-of-concept implementation of the protocol for throughput and latency in a controlled experiment using 7 nodes in 4 geographically separated areas, and observed the throughput increasing superlinearly with the number of nodes up to almost 3500 messages per second. It is also, to the best of our knowledge, the first replication protocol with a bandwidth usage that scales according to the number of nodes allowed to fail and not the total number of nodes in the system.

Mobile text messages (SMS) are sometimes used for authentication, which requires short and reliable delivery times. The observed round-trip times when sending an SMS message provide valuable information on the quality of the connection. In this industry paper, we propose a method for detecting round-trip time anomalies, where the exact distribution is unknown, the variance is several orders of magnitude, and there are lots of shorter spikes that should be ignored. In particular, we show that using an adaption of Double Seasonal Exponential Smoothing to reduce the content dependent variations, followed by the Remedian to find short-term and long-term medians, successfully identifies larger groups of outliers. As training data for our method we use log files from a live SMS gateway. In order to verify the effectiveness of our approach, we utilize simulated data. Our contributions are a description on how to isolate content dependent variations, and the sequence of steps to find significant anomalies in big data.

Businesses often use mobile text messages (SMS) as a cost effective and universal way of communicating concise information to their customers. Today, these messages are usually sent via SMS brokers, which forward them further to the next stakeholder, typically the various mobile operators, and then the messages eventually reach the intended recipients. Infoflex Connect AB delivers an SMS gateway application to the brokers with the main responsibility of reliable message delivery within set quality thresholds. However, the protocols used for SMS communication are not designed for reliability and thus messages may be lost. In this position paper we deduce requirements for a new protocol for routing messages through the SMS gateway application running at a set of broker nodes, in order to increase the reliability. The requirements cover important topics for the required communication protocol such as event ordering, message handling and system membership. The specification of such requirements sets the foundation for the forthcoming design and implementation of such a protocol and its evaluation.

This paper presents a new method, BART (Bandwidth Available in Real-Time), for estimating the end-to-end available bandwidth over a network path. It estimates bandwidth quasi-continuously, in real-time. The method has also been implemented as a tool. It relies on self-induced congestion, and repeatedly samples the available bandwidth of the network path with sequences of probe packet pairs, sent at randomized rates. BART requires little computation in each iteration, is light-weight with respect to memory requirements, and adds only a small amount of probe traffic. The BART method uses Kalman filtering, which enables real-time estimation (a.k.a. tracking). It maintains a current estimate, which is incrementally improved with each new measurement of the inter-packet time separations in a sequence of probe packet pairs. The measurementmodel has a strong non-linearity, and would not at first sight be considered suitable for Kalman filtering, but we show how this non-linearity can be handled. BART may be tuned according to the specific needs of the measurement application, such as agility vs. stability of the estimate. We have tested an implementation of BART in a physical test network with carefully controlled cross traffic, with good accuracy and agreement. Testmeasurements have also been performed over the Internet. We compare the performance of BART with that of pathChirp, a state-of-the-art tool for measuring end-to-end available bandwidth in real-time. 

This paper presents a realistic model of the radio energy consumption for Bluetooth-equipped sensor nodes used in a low-duty-cycle network. The model is based on empirical energy consumption measurements of Bluetooth modules. This model will give users the possibility to optimize their radio communication with respect to energy consumption while sustaining the data rate. This paper shows that transmission power cannot always be directly related to energy consumption. Measurements indicate that, when the transmission power ranges from $-$5 to $+$10 dBm, the difference in consumed energy can be detected for each transmission peak in the sniff peak. However, the change is negligible for the overall energy consumption. The nonlinear behavior of the idle state for both master and slave when increasing the interval and number of attempts is presented. The energy consumption for a master node is in direct relation to the number of slaves and will increase by approximately 50% of the consumption of one slave per additional slave, regardless of the radio setting.

This paper present a empirical measurement comparison study of ZigBee and Bluetooth. The parameters investigated are power consumption, packet-error-rate or retransmissions and distance in different environments. This study shows the differences and similarities for the two different short range radio technologies. A measurement set-up and procedure that makes it possible to investigate power consumption of the radio module, retransmissions and packet-error-rate as well as ambient noise is presented. For both the Bluetooth and the ZigBee modules used in this study the distance itself have no influence of the power consumption. However the retransmission rate and packet-error-rate have a large influence on the power consumption. This study have show that the environment has a great impact on the range of the radio modules and the behaviour concerning the retransmission rate and packet-error-rate.

This paper presents the POMPOM testbed for high precision power consumption \textit{in situ} measurements for interchangeable radio modules.The main requirements for the development have been;

Interchangeable radio modules to enable the same hardware testbed to be used independently of the radio standard used make comparison studies possible.

The testbed should be programmable so that the need for hardware development should be minimized. The testbed must be able to act as a controller for the communication and simultaneously make accurate \textit{in situ} measurements of the energy consumption of the radio.

The required sample rate must be at least 50 kSamples per second. The range of the current measurement should cover at least 0.2~$\mu$Ampere to 60~mAmpere with at least 14-bit resolution.

Mobility, low cost and small size are vital for the testbed. It must be possible to deploy several measurement testbeds to act as sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network to capture the behavior of the entire network.

The results for test measurement setup for POMPOM is presented to illustrate a typical usage of the testbed. The results presented show how the testbed can be used to investigate the correlation between distance, packet-error-rate and current consumption for a Zigbee radio.

A trend in the industrial domain is that the networks are growing and becoming more complex, this is further accelerated by the digitalization trend. In order to address this, there is a need to improve the efficiency when moving between the R&D phases. For example, integrate innovative research findings into industrial systems, shorten time to market, improve product quality and reduce the number of issues. Despite a huge research effort on network simulators and emulators there are still some issues that needs to be addressed. This paper presents challenges that needs to be resolved, in order for the industry to adopt and benefit from using network simulators and emulators. The major challenges streamlining the workflow in and between the different R&D phases while preserving the real-time aspects in the entire industrial distributed control system.

Trends like Internet of Things (IoT), 5G and Cloud are pushing for device connectivity to the Internet, which affects industrial embedded systems with e.g., an increase in code base and functionality. Due to different application requirements, there are relative little reuse between embedded systems with different run-time context (from super loop to multi-threaded), and different types of communication (best effort and real time). In order to improve code reuse and changeability, we propose a flexible communication stack design, that can be configured for time sensitive communication with a real-time operating system (RTOS), or configured for best effort communication with either a super loop or an operating system (OS). Experiments demonstrate the flexibility and simplicity of the design with different configurations, e.g., super loop, single threaded, multi-threaded. Measurements show that the variations in performance related to run-time context scales as expected. 

The run-time context in industrial embedded systems varies from bare-metal microcontrollers, to multicore-processors running real-time operating systems. Due to the longevity of industrial systems, reusability and evolvability are often considered crucial quality attributes. This paper presents a new flexible task design that enables tasks to be agnostic to run-time context. Evaluations of the design were made by conducting experiments using a proof of concept implementation of the proposed design. The experiments were based on typical industrial constructs, such as periodic tasks, and event signaling from interrupts. Findings from the experiments show that tasks can be more agnostic to run-time context and still deliver functionality normally used within industry. The results indicate that it is feasible to improve reusability and evolvability between different run-time contexts, and in addition, support hybrid configurations that can reduce resource usage, since e.g. a thread can be easily shared among several tasks.

In order to facilitate deterministic behavior; industrial real-time communication stacks need another design than non-real-time communication stacks typically found in e.g., Internet of Things and Cloud solutions. We propose a flexible stack design that enable code reuse between testbeds and simulators, as well as how stack layers are driven and prioritized. The design can be generalized and used for non-real-time bare-metal solutions like battery powered Internet of Things. Our approach aims at extending the use of simulation during development of industrial systems in order to find logical errors and wrong assumptions earlier in the development. Conducted and evaluated experiments show that the proposed solutions are able to extend the use of simulation during development of real-time communication software. This is achieved by reusing the same code on an industrial testbed and in a discrete event simulator. In addition, the experiments show that the stack design is generalizable and enable reuse with other non-real-time embedded systems. The contribution consists of a set of building blocks for real-time systems that enable control over the system timing when executing on a simulation host while reusing the source code from an industrial testbed. Overall, this will improve the engineering situation, with respect to code reuse, flexibility and debugging. 

Industrial real-time software is commonly evaluated on real embedded systems, while simulators are less used, since the abstraction level and purpose vary with for example, different programming languages and run-time contexts. This paper extends, applies, and evaluates previous work on a flexible task design that improve code reuse between discrete event simulators and embedded real-time systems. The paper focuses on two parts: (i) The performance cost of the proposed design in practice, by comparing the flexible task design with a traditional threaded approach. (ii) The potential of an alternative way to support legacy code in combination with discrete event simulation. The experiments indicate an almost negligible performance cost with respect to the real-time behavior, i.e., latency and jitter, while enabling improved code reuse between discrete event simulation and industrial embedded real-time systems. 

Trends like the Cloud, Internet of Things and 5G are pushing for an increase in connectivity, but, introducing a new type of network in an industrial distributed control system is a big investment with high risks. Time to market with sufficient quality is crucial. However, when getting through the Research and Development (R&D) phases, a lot of time is spent on isolated activates, e.g., simulations, collecting requirements, design, coding, debugging, creating testbeds, and performing various tests. Therefore, there is a need to improve efficiency when moving between the R&D phases. For verification and validation of communication software, the most common network evaluation method in industry are real testbeds, mostly since a testbed can be very similar to the deployed system. Testbeds are, however, hard to debug and costly to maintain. Other network evaluation methods like simulators, have some strengths that testbeds are lacking, like repeatability, control over the network, and lower cost. However, code from simulators can seldom be reused, especially in industrial time-sensitive target systems, due to different abstraction levels, run-time behavior and system timing. This paper presents findings from a case study that targets improved efficiency, getting from research theories, to deployed devices in a homogeneous Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network (IWSAN). We propose a small subset of network simulators features which eases changeability, reuse, and debugging of communication software. The selected simulator features are evaluated with a proof of concept implementation that is customized to a research platform. The findings indicate improved efficiency when moving back and forth between activities in different R&D phases.

Most evaluations of industrial real-time software are conducted on real embedded systems. The use of simulators that provides easily reproducible evaluations is often limited, due to different levels of abstraction, e.g., programming languages and run-time contexts. This paper extends previous work on a flexible task design, enabling tasks to be agnostic to run-time context, with evaluations conducted on bare-metal and real-time operating systems. Based on the same design and experiments we extend the proof-of-concept implementation in a discrete event simulation context, executing on a Windows based simulation host. Our experiments show that the flexible task design can be driven in a simulation run-time context, and still support typical industrial constructs. The result indicates that improved code reuse between discrete event simulators and industrial embedded systems is feasible.

The fast development of sensing devices and radios enables more powerful and flexible remote health monitoring systems. Considering the future vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), many requirements and challenges rise to the design and implementation of such systems. Bridging the gap between sensor nodes on the human body and the Internet becomes a challenging task in terms of reliable communications. Additionally, the systems will not only have to provide functionality, but also be highly secure. In this paper, we provide a survey on existing communication protocols and security issues related to pervasive health monitoring, describing their limitations, challenges, and possible solutions. We propose a generic protocol stack design as a first step toward handling interoperability in heterogeneous low-power wireless body area networks.

Ensuring interoperability in the future Internet of Things applications can be a challenging task, especially in mission-critical applications such as Health Monitoring Systems. Existing low-power wireless network architectures are designed in isolated networks, and ensure a satisfying level of performance in homogeneous networks. However, with co-existence of different low-power networks, the interoperability related problems arise. To bridge this gap in this paper, we study various protocol stacks (i.e., Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee, 6LoWPAN and IEEE 802.15.6), and explain their specific features. Furthermore, we provide a generic protocol stack design that facilitates multiple radios with different protocol stacks, regardless of being IP-based or non-IP-based networks. We see this approach as a possibility to enhance network performance in terms of reliability, timeliness, and security, while providing higher levels of scalability and connectivity.

Mobility is becoming a challenging issue in upcoming IoT applications, where it is crucial to employ mobile entities. Patients with sensors attached to their body in health monitoring application, AGVs in industrial monitoring and factory automation applications, cars with several sensing devices in vehicular applications are a few examples of use cases with the need for mobile nodes. In parallel, Fog computing has revolutionized network architecture, while enabling local processing of measurements, and reducing bandwidth overhead, which results in a more reliable system and real-time support. However, mobility management is a missing framework within the mobile IoT networks with Fog computing architecture. This paper provides a simple and generic seamless handoff model, dubbed as MobiFog, where it addresses the handoff mechanism with zero delay, while providing high reliability.

Remote health monitoring is one of the emerging IoT applications that has attracted the attention of communication and health sectors in recent years. We enable software defined networking in a wireless sensor network to provide easy reconfiguration and at run-time network management. In this way, we devise a multi-objective decision making approach that is implemented at the network intelligence to find the set of optimal paths that routes physiological data over a wireless medium. In this work, the main considered parameters for reliable data communication are path traffic, path consumed energy, and path length. Using multi-objective optimization technique within a case study, we find the best routes that provide reliable data communication.

Congestion control is a challenging issue in wireless sensor networks with limited channel bandwidth. Thus, many protocols have been designed to provide a distributed traffic control during packet forwarding. However, all these approaches are applied to single-hop communication networks, ignoring the multi-hop restrictions. In this work, we take advantage of software defined networking paradigm by devising a controller node in such a way that it collects all the necessary information from wireless sensor network nodes. Thus, based on hop count and local traffic information, controller decides for possible flow path changes to evenly distribute the traffic. The evaluations revealed that the SDN-TAP outperforms conventional routing protocols by reducing packet loss rate up to 46%.

A heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT) architecture for remote health monitoring (RHM) is proposed, that employs Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.4 wireless connectivity. The RHM system encompasses Shimmer physiological sensors with Bluetooth radio, and OpenMote environmental sensors with IEEE 802.15.4 radio. This system architecture collects measurements in a relational database in a local server to implement a Fog node for fast data analysis as well as in a remote server in the Cloud. 

Providing reliable and timely communication in wireless industrial systems requires careful design of error control schemes able to tackle the bit error patterns typically occurring in these environments. As most error control schemes target some specific characteristics of a wireless channel, the selection of channel model is crucial for proper performance assessment. There are a number of widely used channel models, but the question of the most appropriate choice of model for industrial environments still remains largely open. Not many indoor measurement campaigns have focused on industrial environments with their own specific characteristics. In this paper we present a set of measurement guidelines aiming to characterize industrial environments such that suitable channel models can be selected to properly evaluate error control schemes targeting reliable and timely wireless communications in industrial environments. 

Industrial networks can benefit significantly from introduction of wireless communication. However, wireless systems suffer from much higher packet error rates than wired networks do, making it difficult to obtain sufficient reliability within application deadlines. One promising approach to increase the reliability of wireless communication systems without causing excessive additional delays is to exploit spatial diversity. However, often in industrial networks it is not possible to place the relay nodes optimally. Due to this not even relay nodes located close to the source are able to receive the source packets missing at the destination correctly and consequently they cannot assist by relaying. Therefore, to benefit even further from relaying, additional measures should be taken both to increase the number of the correct packets at the relay nodes and to allow the destination to recover more correct packets. Consequently, the focus of this work is schemes enabling relaying, forward-error-correction (FEC) and packet combining without causing additional delays or complexity such that it is possible to use off the shelf transceivers. The results show that the introduction of FEC and packet combining does improve performance by enabling relay nodes to help more often. However, the exact gain depends on the specific FEC scheme used and, in particular, the size of the preamble and other fields that must be left uncoded, but still be received correctly, to be able to use FEC on the received packet.

Providing reliable and timely communication in wireless industrial networks is crucial. Previous research has shown that relaying can aid in achieving this goal. We consider the case when relay resources are sparse such that each relay needs to aid e.g., three different sensor nodes and propose to combine relaying with Luby codes. We let the relay node construct a Luby coded packet using the three source packets as input. The destination can then use the Luby coded packet to recover an erroneous or lost source packet regardless of which source that packet belonged to. The performance evaluation shows that our proposed scheme significantly increases the number of correctly received packets before the corresponding deadlines, or alternatively that high reliability can be maintained even if fewer time slots are allocated for retransmissions, thus lowering the delay.

In wireless industrial networks, providing reliable and timely communication is crucial. Previous research has shown that relaying can be used to achieve this goal. However, we have found that different types of wireless channels encountered in industrial environments affect the benefits as well as the best behavior and position of relay nodes. We consider two types of behavior: the relay node always retransmits or it only retransmits if it has obtained a correct copy of the packet. We evaluate different positions of the relay node by conducting simulations for two types of fading channels: with and without line of sight. The results clearly show that the benefits, the best behavior and position of a relay node depends on the wireless channel, whether or not the bit errors appear randomly or in bursts and also on the distance between the source and the final destination.

To be accepted for use in industrial applications, wireless technologies must offer similar performance in terms of reliability and timeliness as provided by current wired solutions. Wireless channels, introducing time-varying packet error rates, impose a significant challenge to fulfill these requirements. One way to improve reliability in industrial wireless networks is to use relaying, whereas packet aggregation is a method that can reduce delay. Hence, in this paper, we propose to use a combination of relaying and packet aggregation. Based on the type of feedback provided by the controller, the relay node can choose the most suitable way to use its allocated time slots such that more packets can reach the controller before their deadlines. The results show that allowing this kind of flexibility at the relay node results in performance improvements. The more flexibility, the greater the gain, and thus further improvements can be made by adjusting the schedule to take different types of feedback into account.

The interest in wireless communication systems for industrial applications has grown significantly over the last years. More flexible, easier to install and maintain, wireless networks present a promising alternative to the currently used wired systems. However, reliability and timeliness requirements at present met by wired networks also need to be fulfilled by wireless solutions. Packet errors introduced when packets travel through wireless channels imply a significant challenge to fulfill these requirements. Relaying has been recognized to improve the reliability in industrial wireless networks without causing additional delay. Furthermore, the recent results have shown that relaying combined with packet aggregation significantly outperforms simple relaying. However, it is not always cost efficient to introduce additional relay nodes into an industrial network and hence, in this paper, we propose using a combination of relaying and packet aggregation at the source nodes. The results show that when relaying and aggregation are used at the source nodes, the transmission schedule plays a crucial role. A schedule adapting to the varying channel conditions improves performance substantially. By carefully choosing which packet to aggregate, even further improvements can be achieved.

Wireless networks present a promising alternative to the currently used wired systems as they are more flexible, easier to install and maintain. However, requirements on reliability and timeliness which at present are met by wired networks, also need be fulfilled by wireless solutions.Relaying and packet aggregation have been recognised as viable tools to do this. However, introducing additional relay nodes into an industrialnetwork is costly. Hence, in this paper we propose to use a combination of relaying and packet aggregation performed by the source nodes themselves. The results show that our proposal improves performance considerably, but also that the transmission schedule plays a crucial role. A schedule adapting to the varying channel conditions, improves the performance substantially. By carefully choosing which packet to aggregate, even further improvements can be achieved.

Time synchronization is essential for the correct and consistent operation of automation systems. An inaccurate analysis being a consequence of improper synchronization, can affect automation functions, e.g., by producing false commands and warnings. Industrial systems are evolving from the rigid automation pyramid to a flexible and reconfigurable architecture due to market evolution. The new trends in Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS), Industry 4.0, and Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling this evolution. Citing a need to understand the future synchronization requirements, this paper envisions the architecture, communication network, and applications of future automation systems. Built on this vision, the paper derives the future needs of synchronization and analyzes them with state-of-art synchronization means. Based on the analysis, we envision the future of synchronization systems for automation systems.

Recent advances in industrial internet of things~(IIoT) and cyber-physical systems drive Industry 4.0 and lead to advanced applications. The adequate performance of time-critical automation applications depends on a clock synchronization scheme used by control systems. Network packet delay variations adversely impact the clock synchronization performance. The impact is significant in industrial sites, where software and hardware resources heavily contribute to delay variations, and where harsh environmental conditions interfere with communication network dynamics. While existing time synchronization methods for IIoT devices, e.g., Simple Network Time Protocol~(SNTP), provide adequate synchronization in good operating conditions, their performance degrades significantly with deteriorating network conditions. To overcome this issue, we propose a scalable, software-based, lightweight clock synchronization method, called CoSiNeT, for IIoT devices that maintains precise synchronization performance in a wide range of operating conditions. We have conducted measurements in local network deployments such as home and a university campus in order to evaluate the proposed algorithm performance. The results show that CoSiNeT matches well with SNTP and state-of-the-art method in good network conditions in terms of accuracy and precision; however, it outperforms them in degrading network scenarios. In our measurements, in fair network conditions, CoSiNeT improves synchronization performance by 23% and 25% compared to SNTP and state-of-the-art method. In the case of poor network conditions, it improves performance by 43% and 26%, respectively.