6842097
Automated control synthesis for an assembly line using discrete event system control theory
The design of logic controllers for event-driven systems continue to rely largely on intuitive methods rather than on formal techniques. This approach results in a control code that requires extensive verification, is hard to maintain and modify, and may even fail at times. Supervisory control theory (SCT) provides a formal approach to logic control synthesis. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the supervisory control theory in manufacturing systems, an educational test-bed that simulates an automated car assembly line has been built using LEGO/spl reg/ blocks. Finite state machines (FSMs) are used for modeling operations of the assembly line, and for the specifications that accomplish the task of successfully completing the assembly repeatedly. Using the technique of SCT, we derive a supervisor that enforces the specifications while offering the maximum flexibility of assembly. Subsequently a controller is extracted from the maximally permissive supervisor for the purpose of implementing the control by selecting, when possible, at most one controllable event from among the ones allowed by the supervisor. Testing to check the correctness of the control code is reduced, since the controller is guaranteed to enforce the specifications.
13974246
Decentralized failure diagnosis of discrete event systems
By decentralized diagnosis we mean diagnosis using multiple diagnosers, each possessing its own set of sensors, without involving any communication among diagnosers or to any coordinators. The notion of decentralized diagnosis is formalized by introducing the notion of codiagnosability that requires that a failure be detected by one of the diagnosers within a bounded delay. Algorithms of complexity polynomial in the size of the system and the nonfault specification are provided for: 1) testing codiagnosability, 2) computing the bound in delay of diagnosis, 3) offline synthesis of individual diagnosers, and 4) online diagnosis using them. The notion of codiagnosability and the above algorithms are initially presented in a setting of a specification language (violation of which represents a fault) and are later specialized to the case where faults are modeled as the occurrences of certain events. The notion of strong codiagnosability is also introduced to capture the ability of being certain about both the failure as well as the nonfailure conditions in a system within a bounded delay.
10511055
RF2ID: A Reliable Middleware Framework for RFID Deployment
The reliability of RFID systems depends on a number of factors including: RF interference, deployment environment, configuration of the readers, and placement of readers and tags. While RFID technology is improving rapidly, a reliable deployment of this technology is still a significant challenge impeding widespread adoption. This paper investigates system software solutions for achieving a highly reliable deployment that mitigates inherent unreliability in RFID technology. We have developed (1) a virtual reader abstraction to improve the potentially error-prone nature of reader generated data (2) a novel path abstraction to capture the logical flow of information among virtual readers. We have designed and implemented an RFID middleware: RF2ID (reliable framework for radio frequency identification) to organize and support queries over data streams in an efficient manner. Prototype implementation using both RFID readers and simulated readers using an empirical model of RFID readers show that RF2ID is able to provide high reliability and support path-based object detection.
2162080
Harbor: software-based memory protection for sensor nodes
Many sensor nodes contain resource constrained microcontrollers where user level applications, operating system components, and device drivers share a single address space with no form of hardware memory protection. Programming errors in one application can easily corrupt the state of the operating system or other applications. In this paper, we propose Harbor, a memory protection system that prevents many forms of memory corruption. We use software based fault isolation ("sandboxing") to restrict application memory accesses and control flow to protection domains within the address space. A flexible and efficient memory map data structure records ownership and layout information for memory regions; writes are validated using the memory map. Control flow integrity is preserved by maintaining a safe stack that stores return addresses in a protected memory region. Run-time checks validate computed control flow instructions. Cross domain calls perform low-overhead control transfers between domains. Checks are introduced by rewriting an application's compiled binary. The sand-boxed result is verified on the sensor node before it is admitted for execution. Harbor's fault isolation properties depend only on the correctness of this verifier and the Harbor runtime. We have implemented and tested Harbor on the SOS operating system. Harbor detected and prevented memory corruption caused by programming errors in application modules that had been in use for several months. Harbor's overhead, though high, is less than that of application-specific virtual machines, and reasonable for typical sensor workloads.
22550674
Timing-sync protocol for sensor networks
Wireless ad-hoc sensor networks have emerged as an interesting and important research area in the last few years. The applications envisioned for such networks require collaborative execution of a distributed task amongst a large set of sensor nodes. This is realized by exchanging messages that are time-stamped using the local clocks on the nodes. Therefore, time synchronization becomes an indispensable piece of infrastructure in such systems. For years, protocols such as NTP have kept the clocks of networked systems in perfect synchrony. However, this new class of networks has a large density of nodes and very limited energy resource at every node; this leads to scalability requirements while limiting the resources that can be used to achieve them. A new approach to time synchronization is needed for sensor networks.In this paper, we present Timing-sync Protocol for Sensor Networks (TPSN) that aims at providing network-wide time synchronization in a sensor network. The algorithm works in two steps. In the first step, a hierarchical structure is established in the network and then a pair wise synchronization is performed along the edges of this structure to establish a global timescale throughout the network. Eventually all nodes in the network synchronize their clocks to a reference node. We implement our algorithm on Berkeley motes and show that it can synchronize a pair of neighboring motes to an average accuracy of less than 20ms. We argue that TPSN roughly gives a 2x better performance as compared to Reference Broadcast Synchronization (RBS) and verify this by implementing RBS on motes. We also show the performance of TPSN over small multihop networks of motes and use simulations to verify its accuracy over large-scale networks. We show that the synchronization accuracy does not degrade significantly with the increase in number of nodes being deployed, making TPSN completely scalable.
1384171
Efficient Hybrid Security Mechanisms for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks
Many applications that make use of sensor networks require secure communication. Because asymmetric-key solutions are difficult to implement in such a resource-constrained environment, symmetric-key methods coupled with a priori key distribution schemes have been proposed to achieve the goals of data secrecy and integrity. These approaches typically assume that all nodes are similar in terms of capabilities and, hence, deploy the same number of keys in all sensors in a network to provide the aforementioned protections. In this paper, we demonstrate that a probabilistic unbalanced distribution of keys throughout the network that leverages the existence of a small percentage of more capable sensor nodes can not only provide an equal level of security, but also reduce the consequences of node compromise. To fully characterize the effects of the unbalanced key management system, we design, implement, and measure the performance of a complementary suite of key establishment protocols known as LIGER. Using their predeployed keys, nodes operating in isolation from external networks can securely and efficiently establish keys with each other. Should resources such as a backhaul link to a key distribution center (KDC) become available, networks implementing LIGER automatically incorporate and benefit from such facilities. Detailed experiments demonstrate that the unbalanced distribution in combination with the multimodal LIGER suite offers a robust and practical solution to the security needs in sensor networks
47278437
Simulation Based Verification using Temporally Attributed Boolean Logic
We propose a specification logic called temporally attributed Boolean (TAB) logic for assertion based verification which allows us to: (i) represent assertions succinctly, (ii) incorporate data-orientation and (iii) associate timing in design intentions. We present examples to show the motivation for this logic especially in the context of high level modeling of complex real time systems. We formally define TAB logic, formulate the problem of verification on a simulation trace and present efficient algorithms to check TAB assertions. We present results of application of TAB logic for instruction semantics and bus transaction verification of a bus integrated pipelined processor implementation