PACKET HEADER PROTECTION FOR UTILITY NETWORKS

• US 20150100856A1
• Filed: 10/07/2013
• Published: 04/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Inventors: Schmidl, Timothy Mark, Batra, Anuj, Zhang, Yumin, Qiu, Wenxun
• Granted Patent: US 9,231,732 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/776
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0763 by bit configuration check, e.g. of formats or tags
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1004 to protect a block of data words, e.g. CRC or checksum G06F11/1076 takes precedence; security arrangements for protecting computers or computer systems against unauthorized activity G06F21/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1402 Saving, restoring, recovering or retrying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 13/09 Error detection only, e.g. using cyclic redundancy check [CRC] codes or single parity bit
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0041 Arrangements at the transmitter end
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0045 Arrangements at the receiver end
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0053 specially adapted for power saving
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0061 Error detection codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0072 Error control for data other than payload data, e.g. control data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0075 Transmission of coding parameters to receiver H04L1/0023 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0079 Formats for control data H04L1/16 takes precedence; training sequences H04L25/00 and H04L27/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0083 Formatting with frames or packets; Protocol or part of protocol for error control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

A packet header protection system includes, for example, a header checksum (CS) that is arranged to provide error detection capability to FSK (frequency shift keyed) packet headers. Accordingly, receivers in the network can more quickly terminate processing of an errored packet upon detection of error(s) in the header. Quickly detecting packet header errors helps to avoid a sequence of compounding errors such as the repeated transmissions of a packet having an undetected erroneous header. Accordingly, the packet header protection system reduces false alarm rate in the network and increases network throughput.

Claims

1. A networking device, comprising:

a transmitter that is arranged to transmit a data packet to a receiver, the data packet including a data packet header; and

a packet header protection generator that is arranged to toggle selected bits of the protected portion of the data packet header and to generate a data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of the data packet header, wherein the data integrity signature is included in an initial portion of the data packet, and wherein the data integrity signature is arranged to allow determination of at least one error in the protected portion of the data packet header.

2. The networking device of claim 1, wherein the data integrity signature includes a header checksum (CS), and wherein the data packet includes a data portion that includes a frame check sequence (FCS) value.

3. The networking device of claim 2, wherein the packet header generator is arranged to generate the header checksum by toggling selected bits in a length field of the data packet header, wherein the transmitter is arranged to transmit the selected bits in the length field of the data packet header, and wherein the transmitted selected bits have values that are not toggled by the packet header generator.

4. The networking device of claim 3, wherein the packet header protection generator includes one or more shift registers provided with a feedback mechanism that is arranged with feedback paths in accordance with a polynomial used to generate the CRC value.

5. The networking device of claim 2, wherein the initial portion of the data packet includes the data packet header.

6. The networking device of claim 5, wherein the protected portion of the data packet header includes a frame length field.

7. The networking device of claim 6, wherein the frame length field is arranged to describe the length of a frame of the data packet.

8. The networking device of claim 2, wherein a portion of the data integrity signature is stored in the data packet header using the second and third least significant bit positions of a physical layer header of a conventional network standard for data packet transmission.

9. The networking device of claim 2, wherein a portion of the data integrity signature is stored in the data packet header using repurposed bit positions of a physical layer header of a conventional network standard for data packet transmission.

10. The networking device of claim 2, wherein the data integrity signature is generated in accordance with the generator polynomial G(4)=x⁴+x+1 or the generator polynomial G(3)=x³+x+1.

11. The networking device of claim 1, comprising:

a receiver that is arranged to receive a data packet having a received data integrity signature generated in response to a protected portion of the received data packet header, wherein the protected portion of the received data packet header includes selectively toggled bits; and

a decoder that is arranged to compute a locally computed data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of the received data packet header, is arranged to compare the locally computed data integrity signature with a received data integrity signature stored in the data packet frame structure, and is arranged to perform a responsive action in response to the comparison of the locally computed data integrity signature with the received data integrity signature.

12. The networking device of claim 11, wherein the responsive action includes terminating processing related to the receiving of bits identified by the packet length header receiver in the received data packet when the locally computed data integrity signature does not match the received data integrity signature.

13. The networking device of claim 11, comprising a router that is arranged to select a portion of a routing path in response to a determination of whether a data packet forwarding destination includes a decoder that is arranged to compute a locally computed data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of a forwarded data packet header.

14. The networking device of claim 12, wherein the packet header protection generator is arranged to toggle selected bits of the protected portion of the data packet header before generating the data integrity signature.

15. A utility meter, comprising:

a transmitter that is arranged to transmit a data packet to a receiver of another meter in a utility network, the transmitted data packet including a data packet header;

a receiver that is arranged to receive a data packet from a transmitter of another meter in a utility network, the received data packet having a received data integrity signature generated in response to a protected portion of the received data packet header;

a packet header protection generator that is arranged to toggle selected bits of a protected portion of the data packet header of the transmitted data packet and to generate a transmitted data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of the data packet header of the transmitted data packet and to include the generated transmitted data integrity signature in the transmitted data packet; and

a decoder that is arranged to compute a locally computed data integrity signature in response to a protected portion of a received data packet header, to compare the locally computed data integrity signature with a received data integrity signature stored in the data packet frame structure, and to perform a responsive action in response to the comparison of the locally computed data integrity signature with the received data integrity signature.

16. The utility meter of claim 15, wherein the utility network is a low-power wireless network that is arranged to collect usage data in response to transmitted data packets transmitted from a plurality of meters in the utility network.

17. The utility meter of claim 15, comprising a router that is arranged to select a portion of a routing path in response to a determination of whether a data packet forwarding destination includes a decoder that is arranged to compute a locally computed data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of a forwarded data packet header.

18. A method of protecting a packet header for utility networks, comprising

toggling selected bits of a protected portion of the data packet header of a data packet;

generating a data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of the data packet header of a data packet to be transmitted;

including the data integrity signature in an initial portion of the data packet to be transmitted, wherein the data integrity signature is arranged to allow determination of at least one error in the protected portion of the data packet header; and

transmitting the data packet including the data integrity signature to a receiver of another network device.

19. The method of claim 18, comprising:

receiving a received data packet from another networked device, the received data packet having a received data integrity signature generated in response to a protected portion of the received data packet header;

computing a locally computed data integrity signature in response to a protected portion of a received data packet header;

comparing the locally computed data integrity signature with a received data integrity signature stored in the data packet frame structure; and

terminating processing related to the receiving of bits identified by the packet length header receiver in the received data packet when the locally computed data integrity signature does not match the received data integrity signature.

20. The method of claim 19, comprising selecting a portion of a routing path for forwarding the received data packet, wherein the portion of the routing path is selected in response to a determination of whether a data packet forwarding destination network device includes a decoder that is arranged to compute a locally computed data integrity signature in response to the protected portion of a forwarded data packet header.