Profi-Load: An FPGA-Based Solution for Generating Network Load in Profinet Communication
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Industrial automation has received a considerable attention for last few years with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT). Specifically, industrial communication network technology such as Profinet has played the role of a major game changer for such automation. However, industrial automation devices often have to exhibit robustness under dynamically changing network conditions and thus, demands a rigorous testing environment to avoid any safety-critical failures. Hence, in this paper, we have proposed an FPGA-based novel framework called "Profi-Load" to generate Profinet traffic with specific intensities for a specified duration of time. The proposed Profi-Load will facilitate the testing of the performance of automated devices under various network conditions. By using the advantage of inherent hardware parallelism and re-configurable features of FPGA, Profi-Load is able to generate Profinet traffic efficiently. Moreover, it can be reconfigured on the fly as per the specific requirements. We have developed our proposed "Profi-Load" framework by employing the Xilinx based "NetJury" device which is based on Zynq-7000 FPGA family. A series of experiments have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of Profi-Load and it has been observed that Profi-Load is able to generate precise Load at a constant rate for stringent timing requirements. Further, s suitable Human Machine Interface (HMI) has also been developed for quick access to our framework. The HMI at the client side can directly communicate with the NetJury device and parameters such as, required Load amount, number of packet(s) to be sent or desired time duration can be selected using the HMI.
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