Using MPLS in a Wireless Mesh Network to Improve the Resiliency of SCADA Systems

Abstract

Critical infrastructure are often and often being managed by SCADA systems that communicates using the de facto standard TCP/IP suite of protocols. Given the recent advances in wireless communications and the cost-effectiveness of deploying a multi-hop wireless network, we also foresee the use of wireless networks as the communication infrastructure of SCADA systems in the near future. In order for that to happen, the needed requirements of SCADA systems in terms of performance, reliability and resiliency must be ensured. To this end, a critical role is played by the routing protocol. In a previous work, we proposed a forwarding paradigm for wireless networks which was shown to be robust against node/link failures. However, such a forwarding paradigm cannot be used as-is in the case of SCADA systems due to its loose control over the network traffic. In this paper, we present an alternative implementation of such forwarding paradigm, which uses MPLS – a widely adopted technology in the wired world – as its forwarding engine and describe how such solution solves the issues presented by the original version of our forwarding paradigm.