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 as LARN in October 2016 and after successful application for the second funding phase of the SPP, this continuation project started in January 2020 (DFG project number 315036956). It is carried out in cooperation with Department of Computer Science 4 at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

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.

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.

A 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

#

• Reliable Networking Atom (RNA) (Poster SPP Colloquium 2017)

  

  RNA Car for line-following and platooning
  • Node (Odroid XU4 based, general purpose CPN node with extended graphic processing)
  • Car (Raspberry Pi based, mobile platform)
  • Drone (CrazyFlie based, highly mobile and energy-constrained platform)
• Predictably Reliable Real-time Transport (PRRT) Protocol

  

  RNA Drone using a custom CrazyFlie
  • Partially reliable, time-constrained process-to-process communication
  • Adaptive Hybrid Error Control
  • Latency-avoiding Congestion Control
  • Rate Control & Pacing
• X-Lap: Cross-Layer Profiling and Latency AnalysisTool (Presentation - RTN2017)
• Transparent Transmission Segmentation (TTS) (Presentation - NetSoft2017)

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.

Presentations

#

• Colloquium, 15th November 2022
• 4th Plenary Meeting, 30th November 2018, Tübingen
• KuVS Summer School “Industrial Internet”, 15th August 2018, Dinklage
• BarCamp “Hands-On Cyber-Physical Networking”
  • Kickoff, 29th January  - 2nd February 2018, Arosa (CH)
  • Status Report, 24th April 2018, Berlin
• 3rd Plenary Meeting, 23rd April 2018, Berlin
• 2nd Plenary Meeting, 19th October 2017, Aachen
• 1st Plenary Meeting, 21th October 2016, Munich
• International Symposium on Networked Cyber-Physical Systems (NetCPS, Poster Session), 20th September 2016, Munich
  “Approaches for Resilience- and Latency-Aware Networking”
  Andreas Schmidt, Thorsten Herfet

Publications

#

The publications can also be found on Google Scholar.

People and Partners

#

Telecommunications Lab

#

• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thorsten Herfet
• Pablo Gil Pereira, MSc.
• Dr.-Ing. Andreas Schmidt
• Dr.-Ing. Yongtao Shuai
• Ashkan Taslimi, BSc.
• Marlene Böhmer, BSc.
• Sven Liefgen, BSc.
• Kai Vogelgesang, BSc.
• Philipp Tennigkeit, BSc.
• Daniel Birtel, MSc.
• Lukas Bard, MSc.

Chair for Distributed Systems and Operating Systems

#

• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat
• Stefan Reif, MSc.
• Dr.-Ing. Timo Hönig
• Dr.-Ing. Peter Ulbrich

1st IEEE Workshop on Cyber-Physical Networks Co-Organizers

#

• Dr.-Ing. Timo Hönig (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg)
• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Wehrle (RWTH Aachen University)
• Dr. sc. Sebastian Trimpe (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems)

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)