Efficient integration of secure and safety critical industrial wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless communication has gained more interest in industrial automation due to flexibility, mobility, and cost reduction. Wireless systems, in general, require additional and different engineering and maintenance tasks, for example cryptographic key management. This is an important aspect that needs to be addressed before wireless systems can be deployed and maintained efficiently in the industry. In this paper, we take an holistic approach that addresses safety and security regardless of the underlying media. In our proposed framework we introduce security modules which can be retrofitted to provide end-to-end integrity and authentication measures by utilizing the black channel concept. With the proposed approach, we can extend and provide end-to-end security as well as functional safety using existing automation equipment and standards, such as Profisafe, Profinet IO, and WirelessHART. Furthermore, we improve the WirelessHART standard with periodic and deterministic downlink transmissions to enable efficient usage of wireless actuators, as well as improving the performance of functional safety protocols.