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).

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Recent and Emerging Topics in Wireless Industrial Communications: A Selection

This paper presents an FPGA based Ethernet cut-through switch that is optimized for one-step PTP clock synchronization and fast forwarding of real-time Ethernet frames. Whereas a standard switch ASIC provides sophisticated mechanisms for switching of non-real-time frames, an attached FPGA implements cut-through switching of real-time frames and synchronization events. Moreover, timestamping of synchronization events, one-step bridge delay compensation, peer-delay responses for power profile and a servo clock are implemented in hardware. The results show that even a low-cost Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA comprising 47,000 Look-up tables can fulfill the requirements for switching 6 Ethernet ports at 100 Mbps. The combination of cut-through forwarding and transparent one-step clock synchronization yields to bridge delays less than 3 microseconds for both real-time Ethernet data and synchronization events. Therefore, the presented switch can be flexibly integrated into time-synchronized real-time networks in order to provide improved switching functions.

An FPGA based cut-through switch optimized for one-step PTP and real-time Ethernet

Because energy efficiency is gaining more importance these days and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) could be used to make use of potential everyday objects into Internet of Things (IOT) - a software, platform and vendor independent common service interface that can be used in such low resource devices has high potential. OPC UA is an emerging middleware solution that addresses the above points but is bulky due to its abundant features. Further optimization is necessary to bring the OPC UA into such resource-limited devices. We have scaled down the OPC UA protocol stack footprint down to the chip level [16]. In this paper, we propose an optimization approach to minimize the OPC UA network footprint.

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An optimized OPC UA transport profile to bringing Bluetooth Low Energy Device into IP networks

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) represent a new generation of control systems where distributed local control systems are connected not only physically, but also computationally by means of communication networks. CPSs target introducing intelligence beside traditional monitoring and control functionalities in a way that optimize the performance of the overall system. However, the realization of many CPS applications requires reliable communication systems that provide quality of service (QoS) control. In this domain, Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard offers a comprehensive QoS frame work. Nevertheless, commercial implementations of the standard provide only best effort type of service. In this paper, we demonstrated the benefits of using LTE networks with QoS support for CPSs by comparing the performance of a CPS application over LTE network with and without QoS support. The results clearly indicate the benefit to enable the QoS features in commercial implementations of LTE in order to realize reliable CPS applications.

Using LTE as an access network for internet-based cyber-physical systems

Systemkomplexität in der Automation beherrschen

The advent of Unified Modeling Language version 2.0 (UML 2.0) along with its UML testing profile in the recent years, promises to be a major break through in the field of formal description techniques. Thus in this paper we evaluate the suitability of UML 2.0 combined with its Testing profile for the engineering of industrial communication protocols using a case study. For our experimental case study we made use of the simple and most commonly known INRES protocol.

Jurgen Jasperneite

Papers

An FPGA based cut-through switch optimized for one-step PTP and real-time Ethernet

An optimized OPC UA transport profile to bringing Bluetooth Low Energy Device into IP networks

Using LTE as an access network for internet-based cyber-physical systems

Systemkomplexität in der Automation beherrschen

Industrial communication protocol engineering using UML 2.0: A case study