Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging domain that promises ubiquitous connection to the Internet, turning common objects into connected devices. The IoT paradigm is changing the way people interact with things around them. It paves the way for creating pervasively connected infrastructures to support innovative services and promises better flexibility and efficiency. Such advantages are attractive not only for consumer applications, but also for the industrial domain. Over the last few years, we have been witnessing the IoT paradigm making its way into the industry marketplace with purposely designed solutions. In this paper, we clarify the concepts of IoT, Industrial IoT, and Industry 4.0. We highlight the opportunities brought in by this paradigm shift as well as the challenges for its realization. In particular, we focus on the challenges associated with the need of energy efficiency, real-time performance, coexistence, interoperability, and security and privacy. We also provide a systematic overview of the state-of-the-art research efforts and potential research directions to solve Industrial IoT challenges.

Industrial Internet of Things: Challenges, Opportunities, and Directions

With the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyberphysical system (CPS) concepts in industrial application scenarios, industrial automation is undergoing a tremendous change. This is made possible in part by recent advances in technology that allow interconnection on a wider and more fine-grained scale. The purpose of this article is to review technological trends and the impact they may have on industrial communication. We will review the impact of IoT and CPSs on industrial automation from an industry 4.0 perspective, give a survey of the current state of work on Ethernet time-sensitive networking (TSN), and shed light on the role of fifth-generation (5G) telecom networks in automation. Moreover, we will point out the need for harmonization beyond networking.

The Future of Industrial Communication: Automation Networks in the Era of the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0

One of the most significant advances in the development of computer science, information and communication technologies is represented by the cyber-physical systems (CPS). They are systems of collaborating computational entities which are in intensive connection with the surrounding physical world and its on-going processes, providing and using, at the same time, data-accessing and data-processing services available on the Internet. Cyber-physical production systems (CPPS), relying on the latest, and the foreseeable further developments of computer science, information and communication technologies on one hand, and of manufacturing science and technology, on the other, may lead to the 4th industrial revolution, frequently noted as Industrie 4.0. The paper underlines that there are significant roots in general – and in particular to the CIRP community – which point towards CPPS. Expectations towards research in and implementation of CPS and CPPS are outlined and some case studies are introduced. Related new R&D challenges are highlighted.

Cyber-physical systems in manufacturing

This paper provides an overview of the recent developments in data-based techniques focused on modern industrial applications. As one of the hottest research topics for complicated processes, the data-based techniques have been rapidly developed over the past two decades and widely used in numerous industrial sectors nowadays. The core of data-based techniques is to take full advantage of the huge amounts of available process data, aiming to acquire the useful information within. Compared with the well-developed model-based approaches, data-based techniques provide efficient alternative solutions for different industrial issues under various operating conditions. The main objective of this paper is to review and summarize the recent achievements in data-based techniques, especially for complicated industrial applications, thus providing a referee for further study on the related topics both from academic and practical points of view. This paper begins with a brief evolutionary overview of data-based techniques in the last two decades. Then, the methodologies only based on process measurements and the model-data integrated techniques will be further introduced. The recent developments for modern industrial applications are, respectively, presented mainly from perspectives of monitoring and control. The new trends of data-based technique as well as potential application fields are finally discussed.

Data-Based Techniques Focused on Modern Industry: An Overview

In this paper we discuss a selection of promising and interesting research areas in the design of protocols and systems for wireless industrial communications. We have selected topics that have either emerged as hot topics in the industrial communications community in the last few years (like wireless sensor networks), or which could be worthwhile research topics in the next few years (for example cooperative diversity techniques for error control, cognitive radio/opportunistic spectrum access for mitigation of external interferences).

/pdf/recent-and-emerging-topics-in-wireless-industrial-2rsgyci4x6.pdf

Recent and Emerging Topics in Wireless Industrial Communications: A Selection

Nowadays, computer systems are presented in almost all types of human activity and they support any kind of industry as well Most of these systems are distributed where the communication between nodes is based on computer networks of any kind Connectivity between system components is the key issue when designing distributed systems, especially systems of industrial informatics The industrial area requires a wide range of computer communication means, particularly time-constrained and safety-enhancing ones From fieldbus and industrial Ethernet technologies through wireless and internet-working solutions to standardization issues, there are many aspects of computer networks uses and many interesting research domains Lots of them are quite sophisticated or even unique The main goal of this paper is to present the survey of the latest trends in the communication domain of industrial distributed systems and to emphasize important questions as dependability, and standardization Finally, the general assessment and estimation of the future development is provided The presentation is based on the abstract description of dataflow within a system

Computer Communication Within Industrial Distributed Environment—a Survey

The IEEE-1588 standard for a high precision time synchronization now exists since 2002. For using this standard in bridged networks a so-called boundary clock is defined, where the local clock adjustment can be modeled by a corresponding control loop. At the field level of industrial automation systems, the line topology is very important. By using Ethernet at the field level, the resulting chain of bridges leads to a cascade of control loops and may lead to instabilities and deviations of the distributed clocks, which are not acceptable. For this application a bypass clock instead of the boundary clock is proposed as an enhancement of the IEEE-1588 standard. The effectiveness of this extension to be evaluated by simulation technique.

Enhancements to the time synchronization standard IEEE-1588 for a system of cascaded bridges

We show, under which conditions switched Ethernet can be called deterministic. The influence of the service strategies in switched Ethernet is investigated by simulation and compared with analytical bounds on the delays.

Deterministic real-time communication with switched Ethernet

The evolution of industrial communication inexorably moves to Industrial Ethernet networks. One important reason for using Ethernet at the shop floor is to participate on the continuous advancements of standard Ethernet. Thus it seems to be the logical next step to change the bit rate from Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet to achieve better performance. The question is, how the cycle time as a relevant performance metrics of industrial automation systems can profit from increasing the bit rate to 1 Gbps. Because of its importance for the industrial automation domain this paper focuses on line topology. The analysis is based on EtherCAT and PROFINET, which are two popular representatives of different architectures for high performance Industrial Ethernet networks.

Limits of increasing the performance of Industrial Ethernet protocols

Many implementations of the OPC-UA are increasingly available. Until now, use of technologies like the OPC-UA was limited to embedded systems with a sufficient amount of memory resources. OPC-UA offers a scalable feature set that could be tailored according to application demands. We believe that a key to successfully enable Internet of Things for the industrial automation applications lies in bringing down the OPC-UA into low end resource-limited devices, such as sensors. Because the OPC-UA provides a powerful information representation that is exchangeable through interoperable services. This paper has investigated the OPC-UA as a middleware solution for such resource-limited devices. For a proof of concept we have implemented an OPC-UA server based on the “Nano Embedded Device Server profiles” of the OPC Foundation.

Jurgen Jasperneite

Papers

Computer Communication Within Industrial Distributed Environment—a Survey

Enhancements to the time synchronization standard IEEE-1588 for a system of cascaded bridges

Deterministic real-time communication with switched Ethernet

Limits of increasing the performance of Industrial Ethernet protocols

Scalability of OPC-UA down to the chip level enables “Internet of Things”