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Nowadays, the incorporation and constant evolution of communication networks in the electricity sector have given rise to the so-called Smart Grid, which is why it is necessary to have devices that are capable of managing new communication protocols, guaranteeing the strict requirements of processing required by the electricity sector. In this context, intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) with network architectures are currently available to meet the communication, real-time processing and interoperability requirements of the Smart Grid. The new generation IEDs include an Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), to support specialized networking switching architectures for the electric sector, as the IEEE 1588-aware High-availability Seamless Redundancy/Parallel Redundancy Protocol (HSR/PRP). Another advantage to using an FPGA is the ability to update or reconfigure the design to support new requirements that are being raised to the standards (IEC 61850). The update of the architecture implemented in the FPGA can be done remotely, but it is necessary to establish a cyber security mechanism since the communication link generates vulnerability in the case the attacker gains physical access to the network. The research presented in this paper proposes a secure protocol and Intellectual Property (IP) core for configuring and monitoring the networking IPs implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The FPGA based implementation proposed overcomes this issue using a light Layer-2 protocol fully implemented on hardware and protected by strong cryptographic algorithms (AES-GCM), defined in the IEC 61850-90-5 standard. The proposed secure protocol and IP core are applicable in any field where remote configuration over Ethernet is required for IP cores in FPGAs. In this paper, the proposal is validated in communications hardware for Smart Grids.

Cyber-Physical Production Systems are characterized by integrating sensors, processing and communication in Industrial Environments like in advanced manufacturing plants or in the new generation Smart Grids. In these context, the accuracy on the synchronization plays a vital role because it is the base for control operations and for the correlation among the distributed sensor data sampling.In this paper the application of the IEEE1588 Synchronization protocol over High Availability Ethernet networks is applied to a new generation Cyber-Physical Production Systems in order to achieve sub-microsecond synchronization. These CPPS can be used to build rings and to interconnect rings as well. These interconnections offer bumpless Ethernet redundancy, without the need of any additional network equipment.In order to measure the resilience and the accuracy of the 1588-aware high-availability network composed by these nodes, a distributed sensors implementation composed by HSR network nodes that benefits from reconfigurable technology (small FPGAs and powerful programmable SoCs)has been analyzed. As it has been verified, although in a case of network failure, the synchronization recovers automatically and the accuracy obtained is in the range of 1 µs, that offers a very good reference for many applications in the industry.

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