Fault Tolerant Network Routing through Software Overlays for Intelligent Power Grids

Control decisions of intelligent devices in critical infrastructure can have a significant impact on human life and the environment. Ensuring that the appropriate data is available is crucial for making informed decisions. Such considerations are becoming increasingly important in today's cyber-physical systems that combine computational decision making on the cyber side with physical control on the device side. The job of ensuring the timely arrival of data falls onto the network that connects these intelligent devices. This network needs to be fault tolerant. When nodes, devices or communication links fail along a default route of a message from A to B, the underlying hardware and software layers should ensure that this message will actually be delivered as long as alternative routes exist. Existence and discovery of multi-route pathways is essential in ensuring delivery of critical data. In this work, we present methods of developing network topologies of smart devices that will enable multi-route discovery in an intelligent power grid. This will be accomplished through the utilization of software overlays that (1) maintain a digital structure for the physical network and (2) identify new routes in the case of faults.