Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

Competitivity Clusters

SAHARA

Participants : Pascale Minet, Erwan Livolant.

Period: 2011 - 2015.

Partners: EADS (coordinator), Astrium, BeanAir, CNES, ECE, EPMI, Eurocopter, GlobalSys, Inria, LIMOS, Oktal SE, Reflex CES, Safran Engineering Systems.

SAHARA is a FUI project, labelled by ASTECH and PEGASE, which aims at designing a wireless sensor network embedded in an aircraft. The proposed solution should improve the embedded mass, the end-to-end delays, the cost and performance in the transfers of non critical data.

During year 2015, we provided support to the SMEs in the SAHARA project for the implementation of network algorithms and protocols.

CONNEXION

Participants : Pascale Minet, Ines Khoufi, Erwan Livolant.

Period: 2012 - 2016.

Partners: EDF (coordinator), All4Tec, ALSTOM, AREVA, Atos WorldGrid, CEA, CNRS / CRAN, Corys TESS, ENS Cachan, Esterel Technologies, Inria, LIG, Predict, Rolls-Royce Civil Nuclear, Telecom ParisTech.

The Cluster CONNEXION (Digital Command Control for Nuclear EXport and renovatION) project aims to propose and validate an innovative architecture platforms suitable control systems for nuclear power plants in France and abroad. This architecture integrates a set of technological components developed by the academic partners (CEA, Inria, CNRS / CRAN, ENS Cachan, LIG, Telecom ParisTech) and based on collaborations between major integrators such as ALSTOM and AREVA, the operator EDF in France and “techno-providers” of embedded software (Atos WorldGrid, Rolls-Royce Civil Nuclear, Corys TESS, Esterel Technologies, All4Tec, Predict). With the support of the competitiveness clusters System@tic, Minalogic and Burgundy Nuclear Partnership,the project started in April 2012. The key deliverables of the project covered several topics related demonstration concern-driven engineering models for the design and validation of large technical systems, design environments and evaluation of HMI, the implementation of Wireless Sensor Network context-nuclear, buses business object or real-time middleware facilitating the exchange of heterogeneous data and distributed data models standardized to ensure consistency of digital systems.

The EVA team focuses more particularly on the interconnection of the OCARI wireless sensor network with the industrial facility backbone and deployment algorithms of wireless sensors. In May and June 2015, we contributed with our Connexion partners to a demonstration showing that OCARI:

• supports wireless sensors of various types (e.g. temperature sensor PT100, smoke detector produced by CEA, fire alarm produced by ADWAVE, various types of flowmeters by Krohne);

• supports mobile nodes and collects their data using router nodes depending on the location of the node embedded in a mobile robot.

All the chain ranging from the physical sensors, the OCARI wireless network, the OPC/UA bus to the KASEM software was integrated to build a Service-Oriented Architecture where new services are created when new sensor nodes are deployed. Services corresponding to sensor nodes that are no longer available, are suppressed. After a service discovery, clients can select the types of measurements made by the sensor nodes they want to visualize.

In June 2015, the CONNEXION project organized an open workshop where EXERA (group of users of instrumentation and systems) was invited. Pascale Minet and Erwan Livolant contributed to a demonstration illustrating the integration of the OCARI wireless sensor network, the OPC-UA/ROSA middleware and the KASEM predictive maintenance system in an industrial application. A video presenting this integration was made with the participation of EDF, Inria, Telecom ParisTech, KASEM and CEA.

We also focused on deployment algorithms for mobile wireless sensor networks in temporary worksites or after a disaster. These deployments must meet coverage and connectivity requirements. In 2015 we studied solutions to ensure full coverage of the area to monitor as well as network connectivity. We proposed the OA-DVFA distributed algorithm to deploy autonomous and mobile wireless sensor nodes in a 2D area in the presence of unknown obstacles that are progressively discovered. This distributed algorithm combines the advantages of virtual forces for a fast spreading of sensor nodes and those of a virtual grid avoiding node oscillations and allowing a simple detection of redundant nodes. We also tackled the problem of deploying static sensor nodes, assisted by mobile robots that place the sensor nodes at the positions computed. The solution proposed, called MRDS, solves a multi-objective optimization problem by using a genetic algorithm.

We also studied network connectivity, more particularly how to ensure a reliable connectivity of the sink with each sensor node located at some point of interest (PoI). Our goal was to find the best trade-off between the number of relay nodes deployed and the length of the paths connecting each PoI to the sink.

Other collaborations

EVA has a collaboration with Vedecom. Paul Muhlethaler supervises Younes Bouchaala's PhD funded by Vedecom. This PhD aims at studying vehicle-to-vehicle communication to improve roads safety.