Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid

© Copyright 2017 — Vanderbilt University

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Recent News


The Linux Foundation Launches New Group: LF ENERGY

The Linux Foundation today announces the formation of LF Energy. RIAPS is one of four new projects to be hosted at The Linux Foundation as part of the initiative.

ARPA-E Summit Platform Demonstrations

Distributed smart grid applications were demonstrated at the 2018 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit - March 13th to 15th in Washington, DC - to showcase the RIAPS.

Recent Journal Paper

A paper on "Device Access Abstractions for Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid" platform was included in the June 12th issue of the IEEE Embedded System Letters.

RIAPS Architecture

  • Architecture

    Architecture

    RIAPS architecture graphic

    Each actor encapsulates run-time layers of RIAPS that provide
    • component framework that defines a concurrent model of computation for building distributed applications
    • resource management framework for controlling the use of computational resources
    • fault management framework for detecting and mitigating faults in all layers of the system
    • security framework to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a system under cyber attacks
    • fault tolerant time synchronization service
    • coordination framework for coordinated computations and actions across the network
    • application's business logic can be kept separated from the low-level details the framework

  • Infrastructure

    Infrastructure

    RIAPS infrastructure graphic

    The RIAPS infrastructure features
    • multi-tenant computing nodes hosting decentralized applications firewalled from each other on a communication network
    • scalable deployment and management framework for the administration and control of distributed applications from a control room
    • discovery framework for establishing the network of interacting actors of an application
    • messaging framework for facilitating interactions among actors
    • coordinated time synchronized scheduled action through consensus with logical dynamic grouping of nodes

  • Dev Kit

    Development Tools

    RIAPS Dev Kit

    Tools are provided in the form of a model-driven development environment (MDE) allowing
    • increased application developer productivity
    • migration of accidental complexity during development
    • use of domain-specific modeling language for compact declarative specification of software components and the composition of applications
    • developer to focus on solving power system problems while low-level software details are handled by the tools

  • Time Sync

    Time Synchronization

    time sync graphic

    For precisely timed measurements and operations the applications need to be aware of and monitor the delays introduced by the network and the software layers.

    Use cases:
    • synchronized distributed action (e.g. breaker activation)
    • detecting network bottlenecks or Denial of Service attacks
    • fallback when global time synchronization is not available
    • communication profiling and tracing

  • Distributed
    Coordination

    Distributed Coordination

    distributed coordination graphic

    Use cases:
    • Group Membership - components of one or more applications form groups during operation for message sharing
    • Leader Election - a single component becomes designated as an organizer of tasks (or decision maker) among several distributed components
    • Time-synchronized Coordinated Action - coordinated agreement amongst distributed nodes regarding when a time-synchronized action should be performed

  • Fault
    Tolerance

    Fault Tolerance

    distributed coordination graphic

    Detected Faults:
    1. reported application process termination
    2. unreported application process termination
    3. application resource limit violation
    4. application component operation deadline violation
    5. unexpected service termination
    6. operating system crash
    7. network link failure
    8. network node failure
    9. application deployment failure
    10. loss of connectivity to control station

    Using Detection/Isolation/Recovery Paradigm:
    • Detection - recognition of an anomalous situation
    • Isolation - finding the root cause of the problem
    • Mitigation - action taken to mitigate the effect of faults (handled by application developers)

  • Security

    Security

    security graphic

    Protects against security threats by ensuring
    • confidentiality and integrity of communications by encrypting all network communications and ensuring that messages were not tampered with
    • availability of resources by providing facilities for strict access control to resources and moderating processing activities to mitigate DDoS attacks
    • confidentiality of data by ensuring strict access control of data owned by an application to protect against malicious or faulty application code
    • applications will be remotely deployed and controlled through the use of cryptographic signatures on the application binaries to be installed
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About RIAPS

The future of the Smart Grid for electrical power depends on computer software that has to be robust, reliable, effective, and secure. This software will continuously grow and evolve, while operating and controlling a complex physical system. Our team is building representative open source energy management software applications that will demonstrate the effectiveness and dependability of the system, while offering a starting point for commercial implementations.

The goal of RIAPS is to provide a run-time and design-time software environment for building applications that executes on the Smart Grid. Applications include, but are not limited to: monitoring and control, data collection and processing, energy management, and safety applications. The main distinguishing characteristic of RIAPS is the completely distributed computing model: software applications are distributed across a multitude of computing nodes on a communication network, and each node has access to local measurements and actuators. An application consists of actors that run concurrently on one node and in parallel on many nodes. The functionality of an application is realized by the network of interacting actors.


CONTACT INFORMATION

 

Institute for Software Integrated Systems

Vanderbilt University School of Engineering

Address

1025 16th Ave S, Suite 102
Nashville, TN 37212
tel: +1 (615) 343-7472
gabor.karsai@vanderbilt.edu


https://riaps.isis.vanderbilt.edu

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Principal Investigators

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GABOR KARSAI
Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Vanderbilt University
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ABHISHEK DUBEY
Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Vanderbilt University
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SRDJAN LUKIC
NSF FREEDM ERC
North Carolina State University
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ANURAG SRIVASTAVA
School of Electrical Engineer & Computer Science
Washington State University
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     Contributors


Vanderbilt University

Scott Eisele
Tim Krentz
Istvan Madari
Mary Metelko
Gabor Pap
Janos Sallai
Peter Volgyesi
Di Yao

North Carolina State University

Yuhua Du
Rishabh Jain
Gholamreza Jalali
Qian Long
David Lubkeman
Lisha Sun
Hao Tu
Hui Yu

Washington State University

Alex Askerman
Dave Bakken
Paramarshi Banerjee
Shyam Gopal
Vignesh Venkata Gopala Krishnan
Chen-Ching Liu
Ren Liu
Zhijie Nie
Xin Sun
Jing Xie

Vanderbilt Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Vanderbilt University
North Carolina State University
Washington State University
ARPA-e

The information, data or work presented herein was funded in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), U.S. Department of Energy, under Award Number DE-AR0000666. The views and opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.