In the industrial domain customers expect a product longevity of 10-20 years, with high reliability and availability. Since industrial distributed control systems often are safety critical, aspects such as determinism, low latency and jitter are crucial. More and more industrial systems are becoming connected to the Internet, since end customers are requiring e.g. business intelligence and diagnostic information, anywhere at any time. Industrial systems that traditionally have been isolated are now facing entirely new challenges that will require new competences and ways of working. Introducing a new type of network in the industrial domain is a big investment, with high risks, often lacking known best practices. Time to market with sufficient quality is of high importance. A lot of time is spent on isolated activates, such as, simulations, updating tools, collecting requirements, design, coding, debugging, documentation, creating testbeds, validation and reviews. Therefore, there is a need to improve the efficiency when moving between the research and development phases for several reasons, e.g., integrate innovative research findings into industrial systems, shorten time to market, and improve product quality. This thesis focuses on improving efficiency during research and development of communication software. First, network evaluation methods are studied, and key industrial challenges are identified. For example, despite a huge research effort on network simulators and virtualization, there are still challenges that need to be addressed, in order for increased industrial benefits. Secondly, this thesis propose a flexible communication stack design that supports different run-time behaviors, from real-time operating system to bare-metal systems without an operating system, and different types of communication protocols, from real-time to non-real-time. Finally, this thesis propose a set of key features from network simulators, that are implemented and used as a case study in a research project. These contributions lead to simplification and increased automation, hence reducing the amount of manual work during research and development. / Inom industrin förväntar sig slutkunderna att produkterna har en livslängd på 10–20 år med hög tillförlitlighet och tillgänglighet. De flesta industriella styrsystem automatiserar säkerhetskritiska processer. Detta gör att aspekter som förutbestämt beteende med små fördröjningar och variationer är avgörande för att skydda person, miljö och egendom. Trender som den nya digitaliseringen, sakernas internet, molnet, 5G, maskininlärning och artificiell intelligens, bidrar till att antalet styrsystem som ansluts till Internet ökar. Ökningen beror mycket på att slutkunder börjar förvänta sig nya tjänster, samt tillgång till affärs- och diagnostikinformation även utanför arbetsplatserna. Att introducera nya kommunikationslösningar inom industrin är ofta en stor investering. Riskerna är oftast höga samtidigt som befintliga kommunikationsteknologier och protokoll behöver stödjas även i framtiden. Att få ut produkterna snabbt på marknaden med bibehållen kvalitet är av stor betydelse. Under forsknings- och utvecklingsarbete spenderas mycket tid på isolerade aktiviteter som till exempel simuleringar, uppdateringar av verktyg, insamling av krav, design, programmering, felsökning, dokumentation, testning och granskningar. Att snabbt byta mellan dessa aktiviteter är ofta inte helt enkelt, på grund av att olika metoder och verktyg inte automatiskt kan utbyta eller överföra information. Fokus i denna avhandling är att förbättra effektiviteten vid forskning och utveckling av kommunikationsmjukvara. Effektiviteten är viktig av flera skäl, till exempel att snabbt integrera nya och innovativa forskningsresultat, snabbare nå marknaden med produkter och förbättra produktkvalitet. Initialt studeras olika metoder för att utvärdera kommunikationsfunktionalitet. Metodernas användbarhet kartläggs i förhållande till aktiviteter under forsknings- och utvecklingsarbete, samt viktiga industriella utmaningar identifieras. Trots stora forskningsinsatser inom nätverkssimulatorer, emulatorer och virtualisering, så finns det fortfarande utmaningar kvar för ökad användbarhet och nytta inom industrin. Vidare föreslås en flexibel kommunikationsstackdesign som stöder olika typer av egenskaper och implementationer, från realtidsoperativsystem till enheter helt utan operativsystem, samt olika typer av kommunikationsprotokoll, från realtid till icke-realtid. Slutligen föreslås en reducerad uppsättning nyckelfunktioner till nätverkssimulatorer, vilka implementerats och använts i en fallstudie i ett forskningsprojekt. Dessa bidrag tillsammans medför en förenkling och ökad automatisering vilket gör att mängden manuellt arbete minskar under forsknings- och utvecklingsarbete.

This research aims to develop data-driven methods that automatically exploit historical data in smart distribution grids for reliability evaluation, i.e., analyzing frequency of failures, and modeling components’ lifetime. The results enable power distribution companies to change from reactive maintenance to predictive maintenance by deriving benefits from historical data. In particular, the data is exploited for two purposes: (a) failure pattern discovery, and (b) reliability evaluation of power cables. To analyze failure characteristics it is important to discover which failures share common features, e.g., if there are any types of failures that happen mostly in certain parts of the grid or at certain times. This analysis provides information about correlation between different features and identifying the most vulnerable components. In this case, we applied statistical analysis and association rules to discover failure patterns. Furthermore, we propose an easy-to-understand visualization of the correlations between different factors representing failures by using an approximated Bayesian network. We show that the Bayesian Network constructed based on the interesting rules of two items is a good approximation of the real dataset. The main focus of reliability evaluation is on failure rate estimation and reliability ranking. In case of power cables, the limited amount of recorded events makes it difficult to perform failure rate modeling, i.e., estimating the function that describes changes in the rate of failure depending on age. Therefore, we propose a method for interpreting the results of goodness-of-fit measures with confidence intervals, estimated using synthetic data. To perform reliability ranking of power cables, in addition to the age of cables, we consider other factors. Then, we use the Cox proportional hazard model (PHM) to assess the impact of the factors and calculate the failure rate of each individual cable. In reliability evaluation, it is important to consider the fact that power cables are repairable components. We show that the conclusions about different factors in PHM and cables ranking will be misleading if one considers the cables as non-repairable components. The developed methods of (a) are applied on data from Halmstad Energi och Miljö (HEM Nät), Öresundskraft, Göteborg Energy, and Växjö Energy, four different distribution system operators in Sweden. The developed methods of (b) are applied on data from HEM Nät. / <p>Funding: Knowledge Foundation &amp; HEM Nät</p>

The debate over whether software system should use a NoSQL or a SQL database, have been going on for a long time, however there are still not that many studies defining which of the two databases that is the preferable one. This essay presents a comparative analysis of the databases MSSQL and MongoDB for the web-based environment Ozlab.  Ozlab allows users and developers to experiment with graphical user interfaces to obtain acceptable design solutions. We compared MSSQL and MongoDB based on the basic CRUD operations on both the databases, evaluating their performance and sustainability with respect to the Ozlab environment. This analysis was based on existing research experiments and my own experience using the MongoDB and MSSQL databases. As a conclusion, our result show that MSSQL is the most suitable database for the Ozlab environment.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is one of the most widespread security attacks to internet service providers. It is the most easily launched attack, but very difficult and expensive to detect and mitigate. In view of the devastating effect of DDoS attacks, there has been the increase on the adaptation of a network detection technique to reveal the presence of DDoS attack before huge traffic buildup to prevent service availability. Several works done on DDoS attack detection reveals that, the conventional DDoS attack detection methods based on statistical divergence is useful, however, the large surface area of the internet which serve as the main conduit for DDoS flooding attacks to occur, makes it difficult to use this approach to detect attacks on the network. Hence this research work is focused on using detection techniques based on a deep learning technique, because it is proven as the most effective detection technique against DDoS attacks. Out of the several deep neural network techniques available, this research focuses on one aspect of recurrent neural network called Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and TensorFlow framework to build and train a deep neural network model to detect the presence of DDoS attacks on a network. This model can be used to develop an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to aid in detecting DDoS attacks on the network. Also, at the completion of this project, the expectation of the produced model is to have a higher detection accuracy rates, and a low false alarm rates. Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) was used to carry out this project. The test experiment for this work was performed on CPU and GPU base systems to determine the base system's effect on the detection accuracy of the model. To achieve the set goals, seven evaluating parameters were used to test the model's detection accuracy and performance on both Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems. The results reveal that the model was able to produce a detection accuracy of 99.968% on both CPU and GPU base system which is better than the results by Yuan et al. [55] which is 97.606%. Also the results prove that the model's performance does not depend on the based system used for the training but rather depends on the dataset size. However, the GPU systems train faster than CPU systems. It also revealed that increasing the value of epochs during training does not affect the models detection accuracy but rather extends the training time. This model is limited to detecting 17 different attack types on maintaining the same detection accuracy mentioned above. Further future work should be done to increase the detecting attack type to unlimited so that it will be able to detect all attack types.

This thesis presents an integer programming model for energy efficient routing of network traffic and deployment of virtual network functions in a network. The optimization model provides certain protection against hardware failure, by finding both a primary and a backup path for each traffic demand. Furthermore, the model is capable of modelling multiple time periods, allowing the network to adapt to expected changes in network load. By applying Soyster's robustness principle, the model can also yield a network configuration that can handle network load that deviates from the expected load. Lastly, the model ensures an upper bound on the latency of service chains. As expected with integer programming models, this model is difficult to solve for anything but the smallest of networks. Therefore, a single time period and variable fixing heuristic is proposed to help speed up the solve time. Evaluation of the model and heuristic is done in the context of the Evolved Packet Core. The evaluation shows that the heuristic indeed improves the solve time significantly, but it also shows that there is room for improvement.

The goal of this thesis was to explore and find ways to implement touch gestures in the context of process automation, with the limitation to one specific use case found suitable for touch interaction for ABB’s distributed control system called System 800xA. The typical way to handle the data in System 800xA today is to show and control it through the so called process graphics. It is possible to do this on a touch device today, but the current graphical user interface focus on mouse and keyboard interaction. Because of this some of the common design elements and interaction cues that are in use right now are less suitable when running the system on a touch device. Important characteristics for the process graphics to have for an efficient and delightful user experience when interacting with the system on a touch device were therefore also investigated. To understand if, and if so when and how, an industrial process control system could benefit from touch interaction a PACT analysis was done as a first step. This PACT analysis was then used as a basis for how 15 use cases and their suitability for touch were evaluated. A combination of two out of these 15 use cases were found to be a suitable aim for a prototype that was created. These two use cases involved navigation and controlling of the system and were found suitable for several reasons, including the fact that they are common use cases for when touch interaction with the system is used today. Therefor these two use cases in combination was chosen as the target use case. To find which gestures that were suitable for this use case, an exploratory test was performed where the participants were allowed to show what gestures they perceived as suitable for different tasks that the use case could involve. The findings from these user tests were that the gestures should be kept simple, often only require one hand and one finger usage. Based on these findings, a high-fidelity prototype was implemented on a tablet called Surface Pro. As a way to evaluate the implementation of the high-fidelity prototype an assessment test was conducted. The results from the assessment test indicates that while it is important to adjust the system for touch interaction, by for example use elements in suitable sizes and provide functions adapted for touch interaction, it is also important to replicate the current system where it is possible.

No description available.

The increase in the number of internet capable devices has starved the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) address space. IPv6 is likely to replace IPv4 in the future because of an address space much greater than before. This thesis work focuses on how to transition from IPv4 to IPv6 for a specific network. This work includes a study of the most common transitioning techniques and an investigation of the characteristics of the network in question, Office IT-partner’s network. The main problem of the thesis is, based on the knowledge of existing transitioning techniques, to find the best fitting solution. The three best solutions were chosen for theoretical testing on the network. The solutions were tested with focus on network services, addressing, simplicity and future completion of the transition. The testing made it clear that no solution alone solves all problems, but dual stack together with translation satisfy the most requirements. The conclusion drawn from the literature study and the testing is that transitioning to IPv6 without the use of translation causes many complex problems. To successfully transition while providing IPv4 connectivity for WAN nodes, some kind of translation is almost required. A solution consisting of dual stack and Network Address Translation 64 (NAT64) was chosen because of its ability to make the transition easy and as user-friendly as possible. It could also be started right away and completed at a pace of own choice. The lack of ability to translate stateful from IPv4 to IPv6 together with the lack of availability for IPv4 nodes made up the decision of upgrading the internal network before upgrading the internet edge.

No description available.

In 3D-optimisation of today a decrease in the amount of surfaces to render is often handled by replacing aneighbourhood of surfaces with a simplified and similar set of surfaces. In some cases when the surfacestructure is complex and highly symmetrical, the neighbourhood simplification might produce anomalies thatbreak the symmetry in a visually detrimental way. By knowing the underlying primitive shape of the 3Dstructure, simplified reproductions of a surface structure can be produced without risking the symmetricalintegrity of the object.This report details the possibility of detecting the primitive shapes in a 3D-structure of voxels by analysingthe available data. This is done by looking at neighbourhoods of voxels and using the gathered information toestimate normals and curvature data that indicates a primitive shape. Through categorisation, clustering andfiltering of the data, primitive shapes can be detected with a degree of certainty.Utilising a few different approaches an analysis is performed on the efficiency in the detection of primitiveson the surface of voxel structures. The report concludes that with a sequence of easy-to-follow steps reliabledetection of primitives can be performed.