FEATURE COMMUNICATIONS & NETWORKING INDUSTRY COMMENT
by Grant Collier, BARA/PPMA (British Automation and Robot Association)
T
asked with ensuring that supermarkets treat their suppliers
fairly and lawfully, the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) will undoubtedly have a positive effect on confidence in automation for the food sector. With her responsibilities backed up by law, Christine Tacon can launch investigations into suspected breaches of the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) and name, shame and even fine the culprits for any misconduct. Tacon will be part of the seminar
programme at the PPMA Show 2014 on September 30th, and is keen to resolve issues affecting the entire supply chain, thereby encouraging greater investment in automation within the food sector. Tacon is keen to hear from indirect, as well as direct suppliers, either personally, anonymously or through a trade association - and this doesn’t just mean front line organisations such as the Food & Drink Federation or the National Farmers Union - it also includes the PPMA. At a recent seminar organised by
the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum, Tacon announced her plan to crack down on unscrupulous practices by the multiple retailers. Regarding retailers charging suppliers hundreds of thousands of pounds for discrepancies on promotions going back up to six years, Tacon stated that she was seeking agreements from the major retailers to restrict their use of such ‘forensic’ investigations. Tacon’s appointment has
significant implications for PPMA members. This is good news as far as automating the food sector is concerned, and also for PPMA members, most of whom supply machinery to the food sector. After surveying the 367 manufacturers that took part in the government’s Automating Manufacturing Programme, there is clear evidence that the reluctance to adopt automation is in part driven by endless squeezing of supplier margins by the major multiple retailers. The adjudicator’s actions will hopefully help to change this culture and enable much needed automation of the UK’s largest industry.
BARA/PPMA
www.bara.org.uk T: 0208 773 8111
WORKING ANYWHERE
Ross Yu, product marketing manager, Dust Networks Product Group, Linear Technology Corp, explains how SmartMesh embedded wireless mesh networks enable sensors to be placed ‘anywhere’
W
hether on the surface of a city street to sense available parking spots, or in industrial
hazardous locations, the demand for sensor information has never been higher, and new applications require sensors to be placed in locations that were previously thought to be impractical. In order to place a sensor anywhere data needs to be collected and sensors must be truly wireless - both for communications and power. Since sensors need to be placed optimally for data collection, and not necessarily optimally for RF communications, the devices must be able to communicate both reliably and securely if wireless sensor networks are to continue to gain acceptance and to be used ubiquitously. SmartMesh embedded wireless mesh sensor networks from Linear Technology’s Dust Networks product line are successfully deployed by end users in some of the toughest RF environments (see page 14), including industrial process plants, data centres, smart parking applications, railcars and mining. Built on the Linear’s ultralow power, LTC5800 802.15.4 System-on-Chip, SmartMesh networks are embedded systems complete with both hardware and networking software that deliver secure mesh sensor networks with >99.999% data reliability and ultralow power (above right).
TIME SYNCHRONISED FOR LOW POWER SmartMesh networks communicate using a Time Synchronised Channel Hopping (TSCH) link layer, a technique pioneered by Dust Networks and a foundational building block of wireless mesh networking standards, such as WirelessHART (IEC62591) and IEEE 802.15.4e. In a TSCH network, all motes in the network are synchronised to within a few microseconds, enabling network nodes to sleep at ultralow power between scheduled communications, typically resulting in a duty cycle of <1%. In a SmartMesh mesh network, wireless nodes, even routing ones, typically consume <50μA average, enabling multi-year battery life on a pair of lithium AA batteries, or even operation on energy harvested power.
PATH AND FREQUENCY DIVERSITY FOR RELIABILITY Time synchronisation enables channel-hopping on every transmitter-receiver pair for frequency diversity. With a SmartMesh network, every packet exchange channel-hops to avoid inevitable RF interference and multiple transmissions can occur simultaneously, increasing overall network bandwidth. Each device has redundant paths to overcome communications interruption due to interference, physical obstruction or multipath fading. If a packet transmission fails on one path, a mote will automatically retry on the next available path and a different RF channel (below left).
SECURE MESH SOLUTION SmartMesh networks have several layers of security to address confidentiality (through encryption), integrity (of a message) and authenticity (verifying that a message is from the stated sender). At the link-layer, packets are authenticated at each hop using a Message Integrity Check (MIC) based on a run-time key and a time-based counter. This ensures that only motes that are synchronised and have been admitted into the network by the manager can send messages. Additionally, packets are authenticated and encrypted end to end using run-time session keys and a shared counter. This ensures that only the intended recipient
will understand the message (data privacy), and also that replays, data corruption or man-in-the- middle attacks can be avoided (data security). Furthermore, SmartMesh’s 128-bit AES cipher has been certified to US NIST Advanced Encryption Standard, FIPS-197. Encryption keys are generated using a true thermal random noise generator, as measured in the LTC5800 RF front end with the antenna disconnected. This serves as the entropy source to seed a cryptographic random number generator.
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Linear Technology
www.linear.com T: 01628 477 066
26 APRIL 2014 | AUTOMATION
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