Utilizing LTE QoS Features to Provide ReliableAccess Network for Cyber-Physical Systems

Mohammad Elattar1, Lars Durkop1 and Jurgen Jasperneite1,2

1inIT Institute Industrial IT, Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, D-32657 Lemgo, Germanymohammad.elattar@stud.hs-owl.de, {lars.duerkop, juergen.jasperneite}@hs-owl.de

2Fraunhofer IOSB-INA Application Center Industrial Automation, D-32657 Lemgo, Germanyjuergen.jasperneite@iosb-ina.fraunhofer.de

AbstractCyber-physical systems (CPSs) are a new paradigmof control systems where control, communication, and computa-tion fields intersect. Applications of such systems are expectedto play an important role in many domains in the future.This includes critical domains such as transportation and healthdomains. Hence, it is quite important for such systems to operatereliable. Moreover, many CPS applications are characterizedby having different modes of operation along with differentcorresponding traffic patterns and communication requirements.All this requires reliable communication networks that providenot only quality of service (QoS) support but also flexibility toadapt according to the varying communication requirements ofthe application/user. On the other hand, recent cellular standardssuch as Long Term Evolution (LTE) offer higher QoS controlcompared to earlier cellular standards with the ability to differ-entiate traffic at both the service and user levels. In this paper,we evaluate the ability of LTE cellular technology under certainQoS and load conditions to provide reliable communications forCPS applications characterized by possessing different modesof operation along with different corresponding traffic patternsand communication requirements. Our evaluation results indicatethe ability of LTE cellular technology to provide reliable andadaptable communications for CPSs when QoS is provided.

I. INTRODUCTION

Intelligent control systems that are able to interact withphysical processes and span wide geographical areas representthe expected evolution of the current and mostly local controlsystems. These systems are a composite of different technolo-gies in the control, communication, and computation fields. Acommonly used term to refer to such systems in the literatureis cyber-physical systems (CPSs) [1], [2]. CPSs target, besidethe normal monitoring and controlling functionalities, the opti-mization of the overall system with explicit computation capa-bilities between the different units. Over the last decade, manyCPSs have been proposed along with studies estimating theirtraffic characteristics and/or communication requirements. Oneof the main requirements for CPSs as indicated in [3], [4],[5] is reliability. System reliability, as defined in [6], is theability of the system to perform its tasks for a specific timeand under the stated conditions. Moreover, the lack of timingpredictability in existing best effort communication networksand the need for reliable communication networks to realizeCPSs, especially in critical domains, were highlighted in [1],[4], [7]. Reliability of the communication network is usuallyrepresented in terms of the provided QoS by the network. Asdefined in [8], [9], QoS is the user satisfaction determined

by the collective impact of service performance. Practically,QoS is a set of performance metrics such as latency, providedbandwidth or data rate, and packet loss rate. On the otherhand, the wide spread of cellular communication with widearea coverage, ease of deployment, and low costs represents anattractive access network for CPSs. In this paper we limit thescope to LTE cellular technology (4G) only. Even though LTEtechnology has a very comprehensive inbuilt QoS features,they are not accessible in todays LTE enabled cellular networksby the users because of provider policies and, consequently,are not fully utilized. Our target is to evaluate the providedreliability by it under certain conditions regarding networkload, provided QoS, and communication requirements of theCPS application. Hence, in this paper, the performance ofone of the CPS applications with different communicationrequirements with regards to latency, data rate, and usedtransport protocol is evaluated over an LTE network and underspecific load and QoS conditions.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In SectionII, a summary of related work is given. In Section III weprovide an overview about CPS and an example of a CPSapplication characterized by different modes of operation.Section IV illustrates the general architecture of LTE networksand their QoS features. The test setup used for the performanceevaluation and the analysis of the obtained results are presentedin Section V. In Section VI, we conclude the paper.

II. RELATED WORK

The need to provide reliable communication for CPSs hasbeen considered in a number of papers. In [10], a preliminarywireless system for CPSs targeting low latency communicationwas proposed. A hybrid communication technology, combin-ing power line carrier and zigbee technologies, to providereliable communications in electric vehicle charging systems,was presented in [11]. Challenges of reliable communicationfor vehicular Ad hoc networks for intelligent transportationsystems have been investigated in [12]. Transport protocolswith improved reliability for CPSs were proposed in [13],[14]. In addition, the utilization of existing wireless commu-nication technologies for CPSs has been either proposed orinvestigated. In [15], issues arising from LTE scheduling forM2M communications were inspected. The experienced timedelay over LTE with regards to the requirements of futuresmart grids was presented in [16]. Utilization of wireless com-munication networks for monitoring of overhead transmission

2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INDIN.2015.7281864

lines in power grids was proposed in [17]. Furthermore, trafficcharacteristics for a number of CPS applications have beenalso investigated. In [18], the general characteristics of someM2M applications have been presented. A number of smartgrid applications along with their traffic characteristics andcommunication needs were investigated in [19]. Based on [17],the data requirements of the different sensors used for suchoverhead transmission lines monitoring system were presentedin [20]. The above mentioned work addresses providing re-liable communications for CPS either by 1) suggesting newcommunication protocols and systems which, beside beingproposed for specific CPS applications, might take long timeand require standardizations to be realized. 2) considering onlythe communication latency and overhead under normal basestation (BS) traffic loads. 3) investigating the communicationrequirements of future CPS applications without relating themto the capabilities of existing communication technologies. Inthis work, we suggest the use of the existing LTE technologyfor CPSs rather than proposing new communication solutions.Unlike the above mentioned investigations of LTE, we evaluateits communication reliability with and without QoS supportand under two traffic load conditions of the BS (minimaltraffic load where only the data of interest are transmittedand full traffic load where other data of high volume besidethe one of interest are transmitted). Moreover, we relate theprovided reliability to the communication requirements of oneexemplary CPS application.

III. CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS OVERVIEW

In this section, a brief description about the general archi-tecture and the traffic characteristics of one exemplary CPSapplication are provided.

A. General Architecture

A CPS can be viewed as a group of interconnected au-tonomous components or units where services of each unitare visible to the other units of the system. Communicationswithin each unit of the system is usually realized by localcontrol networks while the communication between the units isrealized over the Internet protocol. The general architecture ofa CPS is shown in fig. 1. Here the different units cooperate andadapt their behavior to optimize the overall system operation.A single CPS unit, as depicted in the lower part of fig. 1,usually consists of the following entities: a computationalentity to monitor and control the physical process, sensingand actuating entities to interact with the physical process,and finally the physical process.

B. Traffic characteristics

The wide variety of CPSs applications and their differenttraffic characteristics impose a challenge to consider all ofthem here. In addition, some of these applications, as indicatedin section I, might possess varying traffic characteristics. As aresult, we consider only one CPS application, namely, a widearea supervision system (WASS) for monitoring of overheadtransmission lines in power grids. Overhead transmission lines,as shown in fig. 2, connect the generation plants along withthe substations in the transmission domain to deliver powerfrom the generation domain to the distribution domain ofthe power grid. These transmission lines usually span large

Fig. 1. General architecture of CPSs [21]

distances that might reach up to 50 km and require supporttowers every 0.5 or 1 km depending on the terrains [17].A WASS uses different types of sensors which are usuallydistributed in close proximity to the towers where data aggre-gation and transmission is handled by a more powerful nodecalled data aggregation node (DAN). The DAN uses additionalcommunication interface, beside the