GISOO: A Virtual Testbed for Wireless Networked Control Systems

Abstract: Networked control over wireless sensor and actuator networks is of growing importance in cyber-physical systems as in industrial process control and building management systems. The correct design of wireless communication solutions and control algorithms is therefore a major requirement in such systems. Simulators and emulators of wireless networked control systems (WNCSs) are tools that help the system designer to develop, optimize and validate solutions prior to the deployment in a real system. Without such tools the development and validation of complex systems would be highly costly, both financially and timely. Considering the special characteristic of WNCSs, which is a complex combination of control systems and a wireless network, WNCSs’ simulators must be able to model and emulate/simulate both the control systems and wireless systems together. In this thesis project, GISOO, a new simulation platform for WNCSs has been created. GISOO stands for Graphical Integration of Simulink and Cooja and is a hybrid simulation environment which simulates both the physical system to be controlled and the wireless devices and their networking behavior. Simulink, developed by Mathworks, is a tool for modeling, simulation and analysis of dynamic systems and is widely used by the control engineers. The Cooja network simulator, is able to emulate the operation of a real wireless device and its networking behavior. In this way, developers can set up simulations both to debug the developed software and the behavior of the system before running it in the target hardware. This specification makes GISOO a powerful virtual testbed for developing and evaluating novel communication protocols, control techniques and their interactions in large scale complex systems. We validate the correct operation of GISOO in the closed-loop control of a double tank system.