CNS Core: Small: Low-Power Wide-Area Networks for Industrial Automation

物联网(IoT)的发展正在将包括过程控制和智能制造在内的工业自动化领域转变为工业IoT(IIoT)的重要类别。今天，用于工业自动化的无线解决方案基于短距离无线技术(例如，WirelessHART、ISA100)。为了用众多的设备覆盖大范围的区域，它们以牺牲能源、成本和复杂性为代价形成多跳网状网络，这对支持今天的IIoT的规模和广域构成了巨大的挑战。例如，东得克萨斯油田面积超过74x8平方公里，需要数万个传感器进行自动化管理。此外，在流程工业中，许多筒仓、储罐和工厂经常位于远离中心的位置，位于地形复杂或离岸的不方便的位置。管道可能长达数百英里，穿过困难的地形，这使得实时监控天然气和化学品泄漏变得困难。本项目提出采用低功耗广域网(LPWAN)技术实现工业自动化。由于远距离，与多跳解决方案相比，采用LPWAN不需要复杂的配置，而且广域IIoT应用的成本只有它的一小部分。该项目将开发使用LPWAN实现工业自动化的理论基础和系统。它的重要发现将与标准机构和行业共享。开发的技术将是开源的。这个项目将特别考虑LPWAN的领先技术Lora。将Lora应用于工业自动化带来了一些进化挑战。任何工业自动化系统的基本构件都是在很大程度上依赖于实时通信的反馈控制回路。由于严重的能量限制，LORA使用简单的媒体访问控制协议，不适合实时通信。它需要在几个地区(例如欧洲)采用低占空比。此外，为了优化性能，工业自动化需要实时调度和控制的协同设计。这样的联合设计在LORA变得特别具有挑战性，因为它是大规模的，而且有能源限制。本项目将解决这些挑战，并做出以下贡献：(1)针对LORA的自主实时调度技术和分析；(2)联合和动态地确定控制输入和采样率的可扩展调度-控制协同设计；(3)通过采用状态感知通信的自触发和偶触发控制的组合来最大化设备的休眠时间的高能效协同设计；以及(4)通过在物理测试上使用工业过程控制用例对结果进行评估。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the field of industrial automation including process control and smart manufacturing into an important class of Industrial IoT (IIoT). Today, wireless solutions for industrial automation are based on short-range wireless technologies (e.g., WirelessHART, ISA100). To cover a large area with numerous devices, they form multi-hop mesh networks at the expense of energy, cost, and complexity, posing a big challenge to support the scale and wide-area of today’s IIoT. For example, the East Texas oil-field extends over 74x8 square kilometers requiring tens of thousands of sensors for automated management. Also, in process industries, many silos, tanks, and plants are often positioned far from the center, at inconvenient locations in difficult terrain or offshore. Pipelines can be hundreds of miles long and pass through difficult terrains, making it difficult to monitor gas and chemical leaks in real-time. This project proposes to adopt the Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies for industrial automation. Due to long-range, LPWANs can be adopted without complex configuration and at a fraction of costs for wide-area IIoT applications, compared to multi-hop solutions. This project will develop theoretical foundations and systems for enabling industrial automation using LPWANs. Its important findings will be shared with the standards bodies and industries. The developed technologies will be made open-source.This project will particularly consider LoRa, a leading LPWAN technology. Adopting LoRa for industrial automation poses some evolutionary challenges. The fundamental building blocks of any industrial automation system are feedback control loops that largely rely on real-time communication. Due to severe energy-constraints, LoRa uses a simple media access control protocol that is unsuited for real-time communication. It needs to adopt low duty-cycling in several regions (e.g., Europe). In addition, to optimize performance, industrial automation needs a codesign of real-time scheduling and control. Such a codesign becomes specially challenging in LoRa because it is large-scale and has energy-limitations. This project will address these challenges and make the following contributions: (1) an autonomous real-time scheduling technique and analysis using the demand bound function theory for LoRa; (2) a scalable scheduling-control codesign that jointly and dynamically determines control input and sampling rates; (3) a highly energy-efficient codesign by maximizing the sleeping times of the devices through a combination of self-triggered and even-triggered control adopting state-aware communication; and (4) an evaluation of the results through experiments using industrial process control use-cases on a physical testbed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.