Leveraging SDN for Real World Windfarm Process Automation Architectures

SCADA systems are the main part of automated controls and supervision in industrial control systems (ICS). Current SCADA systems are installed in sophisticated, complex architectures involving many third-party sub systems connected to the Internet for remote access/control and system updates. The existing architectures used in windfarms are based on classical switches where everything is enabled by default with plug and play ports, and where the administrator is required to interact with the physical infrastructure to decide what to disable such as unused ports and insecure services (Telnet, http). The classical switches have limited functions and logics. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an eminent technology, it decouples the control and data planes, centralizes logically the network devices and abstract the network infrastructure from the application layers. Therefore, it can interact with upstream Application to allow the extending of the functionality of a programmable network by users. Protocol like IEC61850+(60870-5-104) or (60870-5-101) are commonly used in SCADA networks to operate critical infrastructures (CI), such as power plants and substations. It is the protocol used to collect data and operate the wind turbines' interfaces; however, these protocols have never been tested in SDN. Emulation environments, such as Mininet, which is the closest work reported in literature, does not reflect the real world with real devices. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to leverage SDN technology in SCADA architecture for real world Windfarm projects. Two SDN controllers were implemented and compared, namely OpenDaylight and Ryu