PiccSIM Simulation of wireless control systems

PiccSIM is a simulation platform for wireless networked control systems (WNCS) using Matlab/Simulink and ns-2. PiccSIM stands for Platform for integrated communications and control design, simulation, implementation and modeling. The aim of PiccSIM is to deliver a complete toolset for design, simulation and implementation of wireless control systems. It is a co-simulation tool for networked control systems (NCS) and intended for research on NCS or WNCS. PiccSIM is developed as a co-operation between the Department of Automation and Systems Technology and Department of Communications and Networking at Aalto University.

In PiccSIM both the network and control system is simulated at the same time. The advantage of integrating all in one tool, is that it is easy to study all aspects of communication and control in NCS, including the interaction between them. There is an advantage of using well known and powerful tools such as Simulink and ns-2, integrating them into one toolset, compared to using several individual tools for studying different aspects separately. PiccSIM allows the study of all the layers and interactions of large and complicated networked control systems.

The PiccSIM Toolchain includes, in addition to NCS simulation, a graphical user interface for modeling and designing the network and the control system. With it the management of both simulators is made easy. The Toolchain can also automatically convert the simulation model to C-code, using Matlab target language compiler and real-time workshop, for implementation on actual wireless node hardware. The simulated system can thus be tested in real-life with no extra programming effort.

News

12th of October 2010. The release 1.0 of PiccSIM.
1st of September 2010. The PiccSIM web-page is moved to the Wireless Sensor Systems-group pages.
20th March, 2009. The PiccSIM simulator is now available using a remote interface. Now you can simulate your models remotely without setting up the PiccSIM platform yourself.
6th of February, 2009. PiccSIM is released.

Simulation Capabilities

PiccSIM has the following features:

Co-simulation of network and control system with ns-2 and SimulinkControl system design in Simulink
Graphical user inerface for network setup and automatic ns-2 TCL script generation
Data exchange mechanism between Simulink and ns-2
Mobile scenarios with position update from Simulink to ns-2
Controller tuning tool*
Automatic code generation to real wireless nodes*
Hardware in-the-loop simulation*
Remote user interface, enabling simulations without setting up the PiccSIM platform yourself

* Not supported in this release

Architecture

PiccSIM uses Simulink and the network simulator ns-2 for NCS co-simulation. The architecture is depicted in Fig. 1, where the user interface and the communication between the simulators are illustrated. The PiccSIM Toolchain (the main GUI) runs on MATLAB and consists the main components: control and network simulation models with network configuration and control tuning, simulation management, PiccSIM library, and automatic code generation.

Fig. 1. Architecture of PiccSIM with main user interface on top.

The Toolchain GUI is also presented in Fig. 1. The first task when starting to operate the Toolchain is to create or load a target Simulink model. The PiccSIM library contains wireless node blocks to create wireless communications between parts of the control loop. Note: Tools for control design are not supported in the current release.

In the network settings window (Fig. 2), the TCL configuration script for the network simulator ns-2 are created with a user-friendly GUI.

Fig. 2. Network configuration tool.

When the Simulink model and network configuration are done the simulation is started at the simultaneously with a button click in the main window. The Toolchain first sends the current ns-2 configuration script to the ns-2 server. Then commands it to start network simulation and then begins simulating the Simulink model. The simulators are time-synchronized to obtain correct simulation results. When the simulation is finished, the results of the ns-2 simulation can be retrieved from the ns-2 server.

Download

PiccSIM can be downloaded from the links below. Some of the features described above are not supported in this official version. The installation instructions are in the manual.

PiccSIM manual

PiccSIM Manual

Packages for Matlab/Simulink

PiccSIM Simulink v1.12 block library and Toolchain user interface

Packages for ns-2

For PiccSIM support or bug reports email us at piccsim(@)list.hut.fi.

A package with PiccSIM extensions including more features will be released later on.

Please contact Mikael Björkbom if you want to share your research experiences with PiccSIM.

Remote simulation user interface

For those who do not have the possibility to setup the PiccSIM platform or do not want to, there is the possibility to use PiccSIM remotely. Simulation models can be uploaded through a Java applet interface and the simulation results are displayed in a scope. You need only to install the PiccSIM Toolchain on a computer with Matlab. There is the additional benefit, that all the simulation runs are stored in a database for later retrieval. The remote user interface is based on the MoCoNet platform.

The remote researchers interface is available at PiccSIM Researcher's Interface. For instructions on how to use it, see the PiccSIM Manual, Chapter 5.

Publications

This is a list of publications concerning PiccSIM:

S. Nethi, M. Pohjola, L. Eriksson, R. Jäntti. Platform for Emulating Networked Control Systems in Laboratory Environments. The 8th International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2007. Helsinki, Finland. June 18-21, 2007.

S. Nethi, M. Pohjola, L. Eriksson, R. Jäntti. Simulation case studies of wireless networked control systems. In Proc. 10th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Modelling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (ACM/IEEE MSWiM 2007). Crete, Greece, Oct 22-26, 2007.

T. Kohtamäki, M. Pohjola, J. Brand and L.M. Eriksson. PiccSIM Toolchain – Design, Simulation and Automatic Implementation of Wireless Networked Control Systems. IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, Okayama City, Japan, March 26-29, 2009.

M. Pohjola. Adaptive Jitter Margin PID Controller. 4th IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. Washington, D.C., USA. August 23-26, 2008.

M. Pohjola, S. Nethi, R. Jäntti. Wireless Control of Mobile Robot Squad with Link Failure. In Proc. First Workshop on Wireless Multihop Communications in Networked Robotics. Berlin, Germany. 4th of April 2008.

M. Pohjola, S. Nethi, R. Jäntti. Wireless Control of Multihop Mobile Robot Squad. IEEE Wireless Communications, Special Issue on Wireless Communications in Networked Robotics. February, 2009.

M. Pohjola. Adaptive Control Speed Based on Network Quality of Service. to be published in 17th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation. Makedonia Palace, Thessaloniki, Greece. June 24-26, 2009.

Wireless Sensor Systems group