CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Holistic Control and Management of Industrial Wireless Processes

无线传感器-执行器网络(WSAN)旨在使用无线节点和多跳协议的物理分布式集合来收集和传播信息。由于其低部署成本、健壮性和配置灵活性，WSAN正在工业自动化和制造应用中迅速被采用。虽然工业WSAN的早期成功一直集中在监控应用上，但当WSAN用于反馈控制应用时，有显著的优势，也有挑战。在控制应用中部署WSAN需要对其网络配置和所采用的控制算法进行仔细的设计和测试，因为预期和观察到的延迟和可靠性之间的差异可能会导致不受欢迎的行为。该项目基于工业过程控制器和WSAN管理器之间的新的闭环交互，创建了一种设计和运行工业无线过程控制系统的整体方法。在这个新的闭环中，控制器使用工业过程的预测模型，估计和比较与不同网络配置相关的控制性能损失。该方案的核心是一个整体控制器，它除了为物理过程选择输入信号外，还从有限的选项集中选择网络配置，以提供安全和性能保证。整体控制器使用对网络状态和物理进程状态的估计来决定适当的网络配置，同时牢记与调度和路由更改相关的固有成本和延迟。WSAN管理器又将实现与整体控制器通信的新接口、用于高效网络重新配置的新机制、以及作为不同配置和环境条件的函数来估计信息传递概率的新观察者。建议的整体控制器和网络管理器之间的反馈配置使工业过程控制应用能够对物理工厂和无线网络的干扰具有弹性。此外，在大规模网络中的实施是通过使用拟议的双向中间件来实现的，其设计用于在整体控制器和网络管理器之间实时传输信息，仅向系统的其余部分暴露每个控制器的相关功能。该项目的成果将改变工业无线过程控制系统的设计、部署和运行方式，同时建立一种新的自适应无线控制系统。

Wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSANs) are designed to collect and disseminate information using a physically distributed collection of wireless nodes and multi-hop protocols. WSANs are gaining rapid adoption in industrial automation and manufacturing applications due to their low deployment cost, robustness, and configuration flexibility. While the early success of industrial WSANs has been focused on monitoring applications, there are significant advantages, and also challenges, when WSANs are used in feedback control applications. Deployments of WSANs in control applications require careful design and testing of their network configurations and of the control algorithms employed, since undesired behaviors can arise from differences between expected and observed latency and reliability. This project creates a holistic approach to design and operate industrial wireless process control systems based on new closed-loop interactions between the controller of the industrial process and the WSAN manager. In this new closed loop, the controller, using a prediction model of the industrial process, estimates and compares the control performance loss associated to different network configurations. Accordingly, the WSAN manager estimates the quality of its internal links and adapts the network configuration to optimize the controller performance.At the core of this proposal is a holistic controller, which besides choosing the input signal for the physical process, selects a network configuration from a finite set of options with the goal of providing safety and performance guarantees. The holistic controller uses estimations of network status and physical process states to decide an appropriate network configuration, keeping in mind the inherent cost and delay associated to changes in scheduling and routing. The WSAN manager will, in turn, implement a new interface to communicate with the holistic controller, new mechanisms for efficient network reconfiguration, and new observers to estimate the probability of information delivery as a function of the different configurations and environmental conditions. The proposed feedback configuration between holistic controller and network manager enables industrial process control applications that are resilient against disturbances to both the physical plant and the wireless network. Furthermore, implementation in large-scale networks is enabled using a proposed bidirectional middleware, designed to transfer information between holistic controllers and network managers in real-time, exposing only the relevant features of each to the rest of the system. The results of this project will transform the way in which industrial wireless process control systems are designed, deployed, and operated, while establishing a new class of adaptive wireless control systems.