A Software-Defined Networks Approach for Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs), especially Industrial Control Systems (ICSs), require real-time communication to ensure, first, stability and, second, efficiency, of the operation of the controlled physical processes. Therefore, intelligent control and management of the underlying communication network is needed to achieve lower and predictable network delays. In this paper, we leverage the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to address the delay intolerance issue of ICSs. In particular, we propose, implement, and evaluate a SDN-based application running above the SDN controller that dynamically re-configures the network to improve the performance of the ICS when the network becomes congested.