Energy-, Latency- And Resilience-aware Networking (e.LARN)

This project is part of the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) priority programme SPP 1914 “Cyber-Physical Networking”. It started in October 2016 and is carried out in cooperation with Department of Computer Science 4 at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

After successful application for the second funding phase of the SPP, this continuation project of LARN started in January 2020.

 

Vision

We propose to develop transport channels for distributed cyber-physical systems. Such channels need to be energy-, latency-, and resilience-aware; i.e. the latency as seen by the application must be predictable and in certain limits, e.g. by balancing latency and resilience, be guaranteed. At the same time, the energy aspects must be considered, as CPS devices often have limited access to power sources. Achieving these awareness-properties is only possible by an innovative transport protocol stack and an appropriate fundament of operating system and low level networking support. Thereto the project unites the disciplines Operating Systems / Real-Time Processing and Telecommunications / Information-Theory.

Reliable Networking Atom (RNA) Architecture

Project target is the evolution of the PRRT (predictably reliable real-time transport) transport protocol stack towards a highly efficient multi-hop-protocol with transparent transmission segmentation. This is enabled by an interdisciplinary co-development with a latency-aware operating system kernel incl. wait-free synchronisation and the corresponding low level networking components. The statistical properties of the entire system (RNA, “reliable networking atom”) shall be optimised and documented.

software-defined networking testbed for validation of the system in a real-world wide area network scenario is available. The developed components are introduced during the workshops organised by the priority programme SPP1914 “Cyber-physical Networking” and is made available to other projects during the entire run-time of the priority programme.

 

Objectives

First phase:

  • Develop a latency- and resilience-aware atomic unit for cyber-physical networks.
  • Optimise the cross-layer communication while maintaining separability.
  • Validate the approach in theory and experiments.
  • Document the statistics of the predictable quality of communication (QoC).

Second phase:

  • Develop a latency-, resilience- and energy-aware atomic unit for cyber-physical networks.
  • Optimise communication across all layers (vertical) and between hosts (horizontal).
  • Extract, refine and validate models for latency, resilience and energy aspects of cyberphysical networks.
  • Document the statistics of the predictable quality of communication (QoC) in selected CPN applications.

 

Solutions & Results

Activities

  • Co-Organization of the IEEE Workshop on Cyber-Physical Networks (2019, 2020).
  • Contributions to the “Network Support for Gain Scheduled Control” BarCamp started in November 2018 in Aachen.
  • Organization of the “Hands-On Cyber-Physical Networking” BarCamp within the SPP1914 Winter School in Arosa.

Publications

The publications can also be found on Google Scholar.

2023

  • Vogelgesang, Kai; Gil Pereira, Pablo; Herfet, Thorsten: “SHARQ: Scheduled HARQ for Time- and Loss-Rate-Sensitive Networks”, accepted to the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC, WiP Session), Las Vegas, January 2023
  • Vogelgesang, Kai; Herfet, Thorsten: “On Multihop vs. End-to-End Transport“, accepted to the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC, Poster Session), Las Vegas, January 2023

2022

  • Gil Pereira, Pablo; Schmidt, Andreas; Herfet, Thorsten: “DeepHEC: Hybrid Error Coding using Deep Learning”, European Dependable Computing Conference, Zaragoza, Spain, September 2022
  • B. Herzog, S. Reif, J. Hemp, T. Hönig, and W. Schröder-Preikschat: “Resource-demand estimation for edge tensor processing units”, Accepted to the ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, 2022
  • Gil Pereira, Pablo; Herfet, Thorsten: “Polar Coding for Efficient Transport Layer in Multicast” (arxiv), in the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), Virtual Conference, January 2022

2021

  • L. Gerhorst, B. Herzog, S. Reif, W. Schröder-Preikschat, and T. Hönig: “AnyCall: Fast and flexible system-call aggregation”, In Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems (PLOS ’21), New York, NY, USA, October 2021
  • B. Herzog, F. Hügel, S. Reif, T. Hönig, and W. Schröder-Preikschat:Automated selection of energy-efficient operating system configurations”, In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Energy-Efficient Learning at the Edge (WEEE’21), June 2021
  • S. Reif, B. Herzog, J. Hemp, T. Hönig, and W. Schröder-Preikschat: “AI waste prevention: Time and power estimation for edge tensor processing units”, In Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy 2021), June 2021
  • B. Herzog, S. Reif, F. Hügel, T. Hönig, and W. Schröder-Preikschat: “Towards automated system-level energy-efficiency optimisation using machine learning”, In Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy 2021), June 2021
  • S. Schuster, P. Wägemann, P. Ulbrich, and W. Schröder-Preikschat: “Annotate once — analyze anywhere: Context-aware WCET analysis by user-defined abstractions”, In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED International Conference on Languages, Compilers, Tools and Theory for Embedded Systems (LCTES’21), June 2021
  • B. Herzog, S. Reif, J. Preis, W. Schröder-Preikschat, and T. Hönig: “The price of meltdown and spectre: Energy overhead of mitigations at operating system level”, In Proceedings of the 14th European Workshop on Systems Security (EuroSec’21), April 2021.
  • Gil Pereira, Pablo; Herfet, Thorsten: “Reducing FEC-Complexity in Cross-Layer Predictable Data Communication” (arxiv), in the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC, Poster Session), Las Vegas, NV, USA, January 2021

2020

  • S. Reif, B. Herzog, F. Hügel, T. Hönig, and W. Schröder-Preikschat: “Nearly symmetric multi- core processors”. In T. Kim and P. P. C. Lee, editors, Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys ’20), New York, NY, USA, August 2020
  • S. Reif and W. Schröder-Preikschat: “Precisely timed task execution”, In Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC), pages 10–19. IEEE Computer Society, 2020
  • Schmidt, Andreas; Gil Pereira, Pablo; Herfet, Thorsten: “Predictably Reliable Real-time Transport Services for Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems”, IFAC World Congress, Berlin, Germany, July 2020
  • Reif, Stefan; Herzog, Benedict; Gil Pereira, Pablo; Schmidt, Andreas; Büttner, Tobias; Hönig, Timo; Schröder-Preikschat, Wolfgang; Herfet, Thorsten: “X-Leep: Leveraging Cross-Layer Pacing for Energy-Efficient Edge Systems”, Accepted to the 1st Workshop on Energy Efficiency at the Edge (WEEE), Melbourne, Australia, June 2020
  • Böhmer, Marlene; Schmidt, Andreas; Gil Pereira, Pablo; Herfet, Thorsten: “Latency-aware and -predictable Communication with Open Protocol Stacks for Remote Drone Control” (arxiv), Accepted to the 2nd International Workshop on Wireless Sensors and Drones in Internet of Things (Wi-DroIT), Los Angeles, CA, USA, June 2020
  • Reif, Stefan; Herzog, Benedict; Hemp, Judith; Hönig, Timo; Schröder-Preikschat, Wolfgang: “Precious: Resource-Demand Estimation for Embedded Neural Network Accelerators”, Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Benchmarking Machine Learning Workloads on Emerging Hardware (Challenge’20), Austin, TX, USA, March 2020

2019

  • Reif, Stefan; Raffeck, Phillip; Janker, Heiko; Gerhorst, Luis; Hönig, Timo; Schröder-Preikschat, Wolfgang: “Earl: Energy-Aware Reconfigurable Locks”, Proceedings of the 9th Embedded Operating Systems Workshop (EWiLi), New York City, New York, USA, October 2019
  • Schmidt, Andreas; Reif, Stefan; Gil Pereira, Pablo; Hönig, Timo; Herfet, Thorsten; Schröder-Preikschat, Wolfgang: “Cross-layer Pacing for Predictably Low Latency”, 6th International IEEE Workshop on Ultra-Low Latency in Wireless Networks (ULLWN), Paris, France, April 2019
  • Hönig, Timo; Herzog, Benedict; Schröder-Preikschat, Wolfgang: “Energy-Demand Estimation of Embedded Devices Using Deep Artificial Neural Networks”, 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), Limassol, Cyprus, April 2019
  • Gallenmüller, Sebastian; Glebke, René; Günther, Stephan; Hauser, Eric; Leclaire, Maurice; Reif, Stefan; Rüth, Jan; Schmidt, Andreas; Carle, Georg; Herfet, Thorsten; Schröder-Preikschat, Wolfgang; Wehrle, Klaus: “Enabling Wireless Network Support for Gain Scheduled Control“. 2nd International Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking (EdgeSys), Dresden, Germany, March 2019
  • Reif, Stefan; Gerhorst, Luis; Bender, Kilian; Hönig, Timo: “Towards Low-Jitter and Energy-Efficient Data Processing in Cyber-Physical Information Systems”, 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICCS), Maui, Hawaii, USA, January 2019

2018

2017

2016

Student Projects & Theses

    • Moritz Miodek, ”Secure Transport for Cyber-Physical Systems”,  Bachelor Seminar, ongoing
    • Luis Gerhorst, ”Flexible and Low-Overhead System-Call Aggregation using BPF”, Master Thesis, 2021
    • Anatoliy Cherepantsev, ”Utilizing Performance Counter Information To Improve the Linux Governor Decisions”, Bachelor Thesis, 2021
    • Julian Preis, ”Energy Implications of Spectre and Meltdown Mitigations”, Bachelor Thesis, 2021
    • Mikolai-Alexander Gütschow, ”Low-Level Design of Energy-Efficient HARQ at the Transport Layer”, Bachelor Thesis, 2021
    • Judith Hemp, “Analysis and Prediction of Execution Time and Power Demand of Artificial Neural Network Inferences on a Tensor Processing Unit”, Master Thesis, 2021
    • Sven Liefgen, ”Transparent Transmission Segmentation under Delay and Reliability Constraints”, Master Thesis, 2021
    • Ashkan Taslimi, “Deep Adaptive Hybrid Error Coding”, Master Thesis, 2020
    • Kai Vogelgesang, ”Multicast Binary Forward Error Coding at the Transport Layer”, Research Immersion Lab, 2020
    • Tobias Büttner, ”Low-power Real-time Communication in Linux-based Embedded Systems”, Bachelor Thesis, 2020
    • Sebastian Morgenstern “Visualization Tool for Control in Networked Cyber-Physical Systems“, Bachelor Thesis, 2020
    • Marlene Böhmer, “Real-time Video Streaming and Control for Drones in Cyber-Physical Networks”, Master Thesis, January 2020
    • Kai Vogelgesang, “Fast Transparent Transmission Segmentation with Kernel-Bypass Networking”, Bachelor Thesis, April 2019
    • Lukas Bard, “Network Protocol for Video Transport in Cyber-Physical Systems”, Master Thesis, November 2017
    • Daniel Birtel, “Transparent Transmission Segmentation for Multimedia Applications”, Master Thesis, January 2017
    • Philipp Tennigkeit, “NEAT – Network Experiment Automation Tool”, Project

People and Partners

Timo Hönig (FAU), Adwait Datar (TUHH), Andreas Schmidt (SIC), Florian Rosenthal (KIT), Stefan Reif (FAU), Thorsten Herfet (SIC) at the “Hands-On Cyber-Physical Networks” BarCamp of the DFG SPP1914 Winter School, January 2018

BarCamp Aachen Contributors (EdgeSys2019 Paper)

  • Sebastian Gallenmüller, MSc. (Technical University of Munich)
  • René Glebke, MSc. (RWTH Aachen University)
  • Dr.-Ing. Stephan Günther (Technical University of Munich)
  • Eric Hauser, BSc. (Technical University of Munich)
  • Maurice Leclaire, MSc. (Technical University of Munich)
  • Jan Rüth, MSc. (RWTH Aachen University)

BarCamp “Hands-On Cyber-Physical Networking” Contributors

  • Adwait Datar, MSc. (TUHH)
  • Christine Kloock, MSc. (TUHH)
  • Florian Rosenthal, MSc. (KIT)