Feedback Control of Real-Time EtherCAT Networks for Reliability Enhancement in CPS
Liying Li1, Peijin Cong1, Kun Cao1, Junlong Zhou2, Tongquan Wei1, Mingsong Chen3 and Xiaobo Sharon Hu4
1East China Normal University
2Nanjing University of Science and Technology
3Shanghai Key Lab of Trustworthy Computing, East China Normal University
4University of Notre Dame
ABSTRACT
EtherCAT has become one of the leading real-time Ethernet solutions for networked industrial systems where a reliable communication infrastructure is needed due to highly error-prone environments. However, existing work on EtherCAT mainly focuses on clock synchronization and timeliness improvement. The reliability of EtherCAT-based networked systems has largely been ignored. In this paper, we present a PID-based feedback control scheme that aims at enhancing reliability of networked systems under timing and system resource constraints. Instead of automatic repeat request method (ARQ), a forward error control technique is introduced to achieve the required system reliability at a lower deadline miss rate of messages. The PID-based feedback control scheme can also improve the stability of a system in terms of deadline miss rate in the presence of bursty errors. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve reliability enhancement of up to 79% compared to benchmarking methods.
