Efficient integration of secure and safety critical industrial wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless communication has gained more interest in industrial automation due to flexibility, mobility, and cost reduction. Wireless systems, in general, require additional and different engineering and maintenance tasks, for example cryptographic key management. This is an important aspect that needs to be addressed before wireless systems can be deployed and maintained efficiently in the industry. In this paper, we take an holistic approach that addresses safety and security regardless of the underlying media. In our proposed framework we introduce security modules which can be retrofitted to provide end-to-end integrity and authentication measures by utilizing the black channel concept. With the proposed approach, we can extend and provide end-to-end security as well as functional safety using existing automation equipment and standards, such as Profisafe, Profinet IO, and WirelessHART. Furthermore, we improve the WirelessHART standard with periodic and deterministic downlink transmissions to enable efficient usage of wireless actuators, as well as improving the performance of functional safety protocols.

Performance Analysis of the Industrial Wireless Networks Standard: WIA-PA

“…On the other hand, wireless technologies suffer from the harsh industrial environments since wireless channels are extremely prone to severe damage due to the coexisting interference, fading, and multi-path effect [5,7]. Therefore, guaranteeing the deterministic requirement on the industrial wireless network in spite of the unfriendly wireless channel turns out to be a challenging problem, and industrial wireless networks (IWNs) have aroused a great deal of interest from academia [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], industry [22][23][24] as well as standardized organizations [25][26][27]. This paper aims to study IWNs from the standpoint of IWNs standards.…”

A safety function response time model for wireless industrial control

“…One of the system requirements defined by the IEC 61784-3-3 is the Safety Function Response Time (SFRT) and is considered one of the most important metrics for safetycritical applications [3]. The SFRT was introduced and defined for wired fieldbus technologies, specifically for PROFIsafe standardized in the IEC 61158.…”

WirelessHART device integration challenges and solutions in industrial automation

“…Their main conclusion was that device and network operation must be synchronized. The safety and security issues on integrating wireless devices in process automation has been mentioned in [9]. The different options to integrate WirelessHART and legacy HART networks are presented in [11].…”