Internet-based SCADA systems

Internet-based SCADA systems

The Internet has now been dedicating a new and highly-efficient medium for sharing information all over the world. The development of web technologies allows information to be displayed numerically and graphically on any conventional Internet browser. Via Internet browsers (or web-browsers), end users can access, monitor the real-time data and even control the field devices and equipments.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are now becoming more and more popular in industrial processes and the demands in functionality and high performance have been increasing rapidly. Furthermore, the fast development of microprocessor manufacturing and Internet technology makes it more efficient and cost-saving to design such systems with the embedded network protocol modules.

Overall block diagram

A best solution on implementing Internet-based SCADA systems is with the presence of embedded TCP/IP Protocol stacks. The solution provides the following features:
• Automatically collect the latest system’s data and real-time data are displayed on web-browser interfaces.
• Users can manage and issue command controls on system’s devices from any internet-connected place.
• Security issue is carefully considered with: server protection by router; user authentication & IP approval on server application software and MD5 algorithm for data encoding. This helps reduce the threat of the public nature of the Internet.
• New sites/devices can be added/deleted/tracked.
• System operation can be tracked for each user by the event log tool.
These type of decentralised control can be more efficient and fast compared with conventional methods.