Secure and Reliable Wireless Communication for Control Systems

Sensors and allocation elements, such as valves and actuators, are pervasive in control systems. In an effort to reduce operating costs and increase system safety, there has been significant research and development focused on wireless sensor systems. To date, there has been limited penetration of wireless technologies to control systems. Those that have been deployed often lack security features and rely on proprietary messaging protocols. The resulting lack of trust for wireless networking and its associated installation complexity greatly limits growth opportunities. Toyon's focus in this Phase II effort is on the development of an open-standards secure wireless sensor system. The overall system architecture is based on the IEEE 1451 standard for smart sensor systems. By employing IEEE 1451 there is standardization over not only the messaging protocol that rides on top of the wireless protocol, but the sensors themselves. The result is that individual system elements, provided by different vendors, will all work together in a seamless fashion. Our focus for wireless communications is ZigBee-Pro which brings to bear numerous advanced security features, including NSA certified 128-bit AES encryption. This is paired with a backend Ethernet connection that leverages a secure interface based on HTTPS.