The Future of Industrial Communication - Automation Networks in the Era of the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 - TH OWL
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The Future of Industrial
Communication
Automation Networks in the Era of the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0
©istockphoto.com/Besjunior
MARTIN WOLLSCHLAEGER, THILO SAUTER,
and JÜRGEN JASPERNEITE
W
ith the introduc- in technology that allow interconnec- etworks in automation. Moreover, we
n
tion of the Internet tion on a wider and more fine-grained will point out the need for harmoniza-
of Things (IoT) and scale. The purpose of this article is to tion b
eyond networking.
cyberphysical system review technological trends and the
(CPS) concepts in indus- impact they may have on industrial Recent Trends in
trial application scenar- communication. We will review the im- Automation Technology
ios, industrial automation is undergo- pact of IoT and CPSs on industrial au- The core of distributed automation sys
ing a tremendous change. This is made tomation from an industry 4.0 perspec- tems is essentially the reliable exchange
possible in part by recent advances tive, give a survey of the current state of information. Any attempt to steer pro
of work on Ethernet time-sensitive net- cesses independently of continuous hu-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIE.2017.2649104 working (TSN), and shed light on the man interaction requires, in a very wide
Date of publication: 21 March 2017 role of fifth-generation (5G) telecom sense, the flow of information between
1932-4529/17©2017IEEE march 2017 ■ IEEE industrial electronics magazine 17
also included the physical layers,
such as in bus systems like control-
To facilitate information exchange, a multitude ler area network (CAN), PROFIBUS,
of industrial communication networks evolved or INTERBUS, to name a few. Figure 1
reviews the timeline of this evolution
over the years. and marks milestones in various tech-
nology fields relevant for the evolu-
tion of communication in automation.
some kind of sensors, controllers, and in Germany, the term has quickly be- Things changed around the millenni-
actuators [1]. After the introduction come a buzzword on a global scale um, when Internet technology became
of steam power to relieve workers from [10]. As a kind of response with similar popular, and IT became widely used
hard manual labor and the invention of goals, the Industrial Internet initiative and a part of everyday life. In automa-
mass production based on division of (IIC) originated in the United States, al- tion, this stimulated a new wave of Eth-
labor, the introduction of automation though it should be noted that the term ernet-based networks that borrowed
technology was what is today often was coined much earlier [11]. basic technology from the IT world. The
called the third industrial revolution [2]. From a communications perspective, lack of genuine real-time capabilities
To facilitate information exchange, a IoT and CPSs rely largely on mobile Inter- in standard Ethernet, however, pre-
multitude of industrial communica- net, i.e., telecommunication networks, vented the development of one single
tion networks evolved over the years, which have not played a major role in Ethernet solution for automation pur-
starting from the 1980s. It is noteworthy industrial communication so far. In addi- poses and led, again, to the emergence
that these developments, in many cas- tion, they require solely Internet-based of dedicated solutions [13], [14]. Ap-
es, picked up and accommodated new communication, which has not been proaches interfering with the Ethernet
technologies emerging in other fields, possible in industrial automation, either. standard, such as PROFINET-isochro-
primarily in the information and com- Both information technology (IT) and nous real time (IRT) or EtherCAT, were
munication technology (ICT) world. telecom networks could not cope with much scarcer and typically appeared
Ethernet, wireless networks, or web the automation-specific needs for de- later to meet particularly demanding
technologies are examples of this cross- terministic, reliable, and efficient com- low-latency requirements, especially
fertilization. These new technologies munication. This seems to be changing in motion control applications. Never-
created new opportunities for making now. On the one hand, ongoing work on theless, real-time Ethernet (RTE) is still
information exchange more compre- Ethernet TSN promises hard real-time a vivid research area [15]–[17].
hensive. Consequently, automation sys- capabilities. This is seen as a real game The third evolution phase dealt
tems could grow more complex, too. changer for real-time automation net- with wireless networks. The foremost
The latest trends influencing auto- working. On the other hand, the telecom advantage of using wireless connec-
mation technology are the IoT, CPS, industry has discovered industrial auto- tions in industrial automation is that
and the emerging tactile Internet. For mation as a promising application field devices and machines can be moved
the latter, [3] mentions industrial au- of their products and seems determined and connected with greater ease and
tomation as a key, steadily growing to consider the needs of automation in there are no restricting cables. More
application field. These concepts are the development of 5G networks. Both than ever, basic ICTs were adopted,
not entirely new and emerged in a con- developments, together with unified and mainly from the IEEE 802 protocol fam-
text of ICT several years ago. Recently, semantic information modeling based ily. All practically relevant wireless
however, they are penetrating industri- on web standards, might indeed change networks in use today build on stan-
al automation and changing the angles the structure of industrial networks, and dards devised for computer networks,
from which people look at automation they might be the prerequisite for actu- such as IEEE 802.11 [18], or wireless
systems [4]–[6]. Moreover, they sup- ally implementing industrial IoT (IIoT) personal area networks (WPANs) like
port recent trends, such as achieving a and CPSs. IEEE 802.15.1 or IEEE 802.15.4 [19]. The
higher degree of interconnection, cog- upper layers are, in many cases, con-
nitive automation, and shifting infor- A Brief History of Industrial sistent with wired networks to retain
mation collection and processing into Communication compatibility, and the main challenge
cloud-based applications [7]–[9]. In the early days of industrial com- is again to ensure real-time and reli-
Applying the ideas of CPSs and IoT munications, dedicated automation ability capabilities [20], [21]. Typically,
to the industrial automation domain networks called fieldbus systems were wireless networks are being used for
led to the definition of the Industry 4.0 developed from scratch to overcome subsystems in otherwise wired net-
concept, where 4.0 alludes to a fourth the limitations caused by the parallel work infrastructures [22], [23]. Indus-
industrial revolution enabled by In- cabling between sensors, actuators, trial automation is a rather conserva-
ternet technologies to create smart and controllers and to close the com- tive domain, and the higher reliability
products, a smart production, and munication gap on the lower levels of wired networks often outweighs the
smart services. Originally developed of the automation pyramid [12]. This flexibility of wireless links. Wireless
18 IEEE industrial electronics magazine ■ march 2017
sensor networks in their pure form,
remote transducer; HSPA: high-speed packet access; LIN: local interconnect network; LON: local operating network; MAP: manufacturing automation protocol; MMS: manufacturing messaging specification;
though a vibrant research field [24],
PROWAY: process data highway; SOAP: simple object access protocol; TCP: transport control protocol; TTP: trime triggered protocol; UMTS: universal mobile telecommunications system; UWB: ultrawide
FIGURE 1 — The milestones in the evolution of industrial communication and related technology fields. 2G: second generation; 3G: third generation; 4G: fourth generation; ARPANET: Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network; GSM: global system for mobile communication; ISO: International Organization for Standardization; LTE: long-term evolution; WLAN: wireless local area network; WWW: World
[25], are therefore not widely used in
Wide Web; ASi: actuator/sensor interface; EIB: European installation bus; CAN: controller area network; PROFIBUS: process field bus; FIP: factory instrumentation protocol; HART: highway addressable
automation practice.
Such was the situation until about
5G
one or two years ago. Industrial com-
2020
munications was a mixture of fieldbus
systems, Ethernet-based approaches,
TSN
and some wireless solutions [26], [27],
Ind. Internet
all of them struggling with the legacy
Industry 4.0
4G: LTE+
of four decades of history in a market
with life cycles of plants that are in the
range of decades. The recent adoption
ISA 100.11a
4G: LTE
of IoT and CPS concepts in the auto-
6loWPAN
2010
mation world, however, changes the
Wirel. HART
UWB
IEC61784 IEC61784-2
scenery again. They put the old and
still valid quest for integration of infor-
3G: HSPA
OPC UA
CPS
ZigBee
mation flows in automation into a wid-
er context [28]. The idea that every- 3G: UMTS
EtherCAT
SOAP
thing in automation is connected and,
Modbus/TCP
PROFINET
e.g., that individual products or work-
FlexRay
Bluetooth
Powerlink
pieces are parts of this ecosystem is
Ethernet/IP
ControlNet IEC61158
EN50170 EN50325
2000
not new, it was introduced with agent-
WLAN
IoT
LIN
EN50254
based distributed manufacturing sys-
band; SDS: smart distributed system; PROFINET: process field net; EtherCAT: Ethernet for control automation technology.
2G: GSM
tems years ago [29]. Nevertheless,
recent advances in communication
TTP
technology allow interconnection on a
DeviceNet
FF
ISA SP50
wider and more fine-grained scale [30].
SDS
WWW
On the application side of the automa-
tion pyramid, the other big trend is to
LON
move the business logic into cloud- ASi
1990
PROFIBUS
EIB
Sercos
Ubiq. Comp.
based applications [7], [8]. This is in
Bitbus INTERBUS
line with IT trends and has much to do
PROWAY
FIP
with new business models of software
HART
MMS
CAN
solution providers on the one hand
and the wish to make IT-related costs
P-NET
smaller and more predictable on the
Internet
MAP
customers’ side.
The big difference with respect
1980
ISO/OSI
Modbus
to the previous waves of evolution
in industrial communication is that
the technological driving force is
consumer electronics. So far, the pre-
dominant roots of industrial commu-
Ethernet
nication were instrumentation and IT.
This seems to change. The work on
Ethernet TSN originated in the stan-
1970
ARPANET
dardization of audio video bridging
(AVB) [31]. In addition, the interest
Communication
of the telecom industry stems from
extending their business as mobile
Computer
Networks
IT Trends
Industrial
Internet providers, which draws from
Internet
Mobile
developments in consumer electron-
ics [3]. After all, one of the appeal-
ing features of the IoT concept is the
promise to use everyday Internet-
enabled devices like smartphones or
march 2017 ■ IEEE industrial electronics magazine 19
of effective runtime solutions with engi-
neering approaches and network man-
One of the appealing features of the IoT concept is agement is required.
the promise to use everyday Internet-enabled devices
The Future of Industrial Ethernet
as end points for accessing industrial data. Today, RTE has become a standard in
the industrial automation domain. Un-
tablets as end points for accessing in- a private interenterprise cloud with lim- fortunately, there is currently no single
dustrial data [32]. ited access to organize the flow of the standard but many different mutually
Figure 2 shows the complexity of product and the information related to incompatible implementations. The ex-
communication in industrial automa- the product and its production process- isting RTE solutions are based on Fast
tion systems. There are application es. Finally, other enterprises or custom- Ethernet and can be divided into three
domains with different requirements, ers may access selected information us- classes, which differ in the achieved re-
e.g., regarding real time, mobility, safe- ing the Internet or a public cloud. al-time performance and the necessary
ty and security, explosion protection, Overall, there is a tremendous extensions of the IEEE 802 standards,
availability, and so forth. Typically, up change in specific technologies used as shown in Figure 3 [33]. In class A, the
to a supervisory control and data ac- for networking in an industrial context. real-time services are realized above
quisition (SCADA) system, industrial However, what has not changed over the transport layer with cycle times
communication solutions are heteroge- time is that application relations exist in the range of 100 ms. Modbus-Inter-
neous but are optimized to fulfill these bundling different categories of com- face for Distributed Automation (IDA),
requirements. They include fieldbuses, munication relations with specific sets Ethernet/industrial protocol (IP), and
industrial Ethernet, and industrial wire- of requirements, like hard time bound- Foundation fieldbus (FF) high-speed
less networks. Today, with the adoption aries, isochronous communication, low Ethernet are implementations that be-
of ICTs, local manufacturing clouds are jitter, high availability, and, of course, long to this class. These were the earli-
increasingly used. Devices may be con- low cost. From an end user’s point of est implementations of industrial Ether-
nected directly to this cloud. Manufac- view, the underlying network tech- net. They build on the entire transport
turing execution systems (MESs) and nologies are of less interest, as long as control protocol (TCP)/IP suite and
enterprise resource planning (ERP) they meet these requirements. This is use best-effort bridging. In class B, the
solutions are also being integrated especially challenging when new ap- real-time services are realized directly
into the cloud, as is enterprise ICT. The plication relations and application flex- on top of the media access control
partners along the value chain may use ibility are introduced. A combination (MAC) layer by using approaches like
Value
Chain
Enterprise
Public Cloud
Enterprise Private Interenterprise
Cloud
Enterprise Internet
Enterprise IT Public and
Private
Value ERP
Networks
Chain
Manufacturing Cloud
Enterprise
MES
Mobile Devices Customer
SCADA Mobile Devices
Industrial Customer
Intrinsic IT Industrial Wireless
Safety
Customer
Real Time
Inbound Mainstream Outbound
Logistics Processes Logistics
FIGURE 2 — The complexity of communication in industrial automation systems.
20 IEEE industrial electronics magazine ■ march 2017
Class A Class B Class C
IEEE 802.1
TSN
Add-Ons to IEEE 802-Standards
Real-Time Performance
Real-Time Real-Time
Client/Server Real-Time Client/Server Client/Server
Streams with Streams with
Applications Streams Applications Applications
Priorities Scheduling
Terminal Device
TCP/IP TCP/IP TCP/IP
IP IP IP
Ethernet Ethernet
Ethernet
with Priorities with Scheduling
Intermediate
System
Best-Effort Bridging with (Best-Effort) Bridging
Best-Effort Bridging
Priorities with Scheduling
FIGURE 3 — The classification scheme for RTE.
prioritization and virtual local area net-
work (VLAN) tagging to separate real-
time data from best-effort traffic. The
There is a tremendous change
achievable cycle time using Fast Ether- in specific technologies used for networking
net is in the range of 10 ms. An exam-
ple protocol in this class is PROFINET in an industrial context.
Real Time. These RTE a pproaches still
use standard Ethernet and best-effort proceeded in different steps. The IEEE Furthermore, the maximum number of
bridging with priority support. Class C 802.3 Residential Ethernet Study Group seven hops in a line topology is a big
is the most powerful class, where the was formed in 2004 to explore the need limitation for a lot of industrial automa-
real-time communication capabilities for an Ethernet specification for resi- tion applications. With the completion
are achieved by modifications of the dential applications, with major con- of the AVB standard in 2012, it became
Ethernet MAC layer, like strict commu- tributions from companies like Broad- clear that streaming data can also be
nication scheduling and high-precision com, Nortel, Pioneer, Samsung, NEC, control data, like that used in automo-
clock synchronization according to and Gibson Brands. This activity was tive and industrial applications [35].
IEEE 1588 in the terminal devices as merged into the IEEE 802.1 AVB Task Therefore, the task group changed its
well as in the bridges [34]. The achiev- Group in 2005, where key players like name to TSN to better reflect the new,
able cycle time lies below 1 ms. Repre- Intel, Broadcom, Marvell, and Samsung enlarged scope of its standards due to
sentatives for this group are PROFINET are involved. The most distinctive fea- the expanded target applications.
IRT, EtherCAT, time-triggered Ethernet, ture of AVB is the ability to guarantee The IEEE TSN Working Group cur-
Sercos III, and Ethernet Powerlink. Here, upper time bounds to all priorities of all rently aims to improve the reliability
compatibility with the classical Ether- data streams, which is an improvement and real-time capabilities of standard
net standard was finally abandoned to in comparison with standard Ethernet Ethernet (IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.1D). In
achieve higher performance. [31]. Because of the usage of a nonpre- particular, it addresses five essential
In the meantime, the development emptive scheduler, however, the worst- shortcomings of the AVB standard
of standard Ethernet in the direction case latency is not better than best- that are nevertheless crucial require-
of a real-time communication system effort bridging according to IEEE 802.1. ments for industrial automation:
march 2017 ■ IEEE industrial electronics magazine 21
Architecture (UA)], automotive commu-
nications (BroadR-Reach) or entertain-
Although the work on TSN has not yet been ment and infotainment systems already
completed, the potential for industrial explore the capabilities of TSN.
automation applications is appealing. The Role of 5G Networks in
Industrial Automation
■■ reduced latencies and accurate real-time support will be included di- Digital transformation is the core of
determinism rectly in the Ethernet standard. Most the fourth industrial revolution, and 5G
■■ independence from physical trans- of the standards shown in Table 1 are network infrastructures will be key sup-
mission rates focused on enhancements of the bridg- porting assets. In the next decade, the
■■ fault tolerance without additional ing functionality. manufacturing industry is expected to
hardware While standardization is still in prog- evolve toward a distributed organization
■■ support for higher security and ress, several manufacturers are already of production, with connected goods
safety able to show preliminary implementa- (products with communication ability),
■■ interoperability of solutions from tions of the new functionalities enabled low-energy processes, collaborative
different manufacturers. by TSN. Against the backdrop of indus- robots, and integrated manufacturing
Table 1 shows the progress of the trial automation, [36] demonstrated and logistics. These concepts are no-
standardization of the seven current that these prototypic TSN functions tably embodied under the Industry 4.0
TSN-related standards. In total, 60 IEEE ascertain a much higher determinism paradigm and led to several application
standards are correlated under TSN, than comparable state-of-the-art com- scenarios defined by a working group
including the 13 security-associated ponents. However, the benefits of TSN of the German Plattform Industrie 4.0
standards resulting in several different come with several challenges, like high- [39]. One driving application scenario
enhancements for standard Ethernet er configuration efforts, which could be is to form a network of geographically
on layer 2 of the open systems intercon- solved, e.g., by autoconfiguration mech- distributed factories with flexible ad-
nection (OSI) model. Inspired by the al- anisms [37] or with the help of software- aptation of production capabilities and
ready known time slot procedure from defined networking (SDN) [38]. sharing of resources and assets to im-
PROFINET IRT, the time-aware shaper Although the work on TSN has not prove order fulfillment. Among other
(IEEE 802.1Qbv) prioritizes different yet been completed, the potential for things, a reliable wide-area communi-
transfer queues in switches. By doing industrial automation applications is cation is needed for this use case. As a
so, a guaranteed data transfer rate and appealing. C ontrary to previous devel- result of these transformations, vertical
latency can be accomplished even in opments toward RTE requirements and industries will have enhanced technical
high-load traffic situations. From a net- best practices for low latency from the capacity available to trigger the devel-
work structure viewpoint, the external automation domain are taken into ac- opment of new products and services.
or built-in Ethernet switch becomes count in the standardization of Ether- A vertical in this context represents a
the most important element, as it must net itself, rather than putting them on system of end-user entities belonging to
implement all the novel traffic manage- top of the existing standard. This can a certain industry. They reside on top of
ment strategies. With respect to the be expected to make a huge difference the networked structure, using end-to-
classification scheme for RTEs shown in the technology acceptance. That is end communication services provided
in Figure 3, TSN belongs to class C. The why user communities for industrial by the 5G network. The network offers a
difference to existing class C RTE solu- automation networks (e.g., PROFINET), horizontal communication within a ver-
tions, however, is that the necessary middleware solutions [like OPC Unified tical structure and across them.
TABLE 1 — THE IEEE STANDARDIZATION PROGRESS OF THE OPEN TSN STANDARDS (SEPTEMBER 2016).
STANDARD NAME PROGRESS
IEEE 802.1AS-Rev Timing and Synchronization for Time-Sensitive Applications in Bridged Local Area Networks Working group
IEEE 802.1Qbv Enhancements for Scheduled Traffic Sponsor ballot
IEEE 802.1Qcc Stream Reservation Protocol (SRP) Enhancements and Performance Improvements Task group
IEEE 802.1Qbu Frame Preemption Sponsor ballot
IEEE 802.1CB Frame Replication and Elimination for Reliability Sponsor ballot
IEEE 802.1Qch Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding PAR* approval
IEEE 802.1Qci Per-Stream Filtering and Policing PAR approval
*PAR: Project Authorization Request.
22 IEEE industrial electronics magazine ■ march 2017In Europe, the next generation of
networks is seen as a combined sys-
tem covering both wired and wireless
In the next decade, the manufacturing industry
communication solutions, from private is expected to evolve toward a distributed
and public communication providers,
offering virtualized and physical com- organization of production.
munication functions. The heteroge-
neity of such an approach is obvious, infrastructure. This mapping defines capacity of current wireless technolo-
as providing a set of suitable applica- the configuration of the highly manage- gies through self-organizing 5G tech-
tion services to the end users will be a able infrastructure components. It will nology and prepare for future sce-
core requirement. It is also important be deployed and changed on demand at narios where up to 100 sensors can
to consider end users’ requirements. runtime, always promising a resource- be operated per cubic meter without
In this context, end users are also re- efficient network configuration. compromising the availability of ro-
garded as verticals. It should be noted that 5G is more bots or connected machines.
For the vertical factories of the fu- than mobile Internet and, therefore, Adoption of Internet technology
ture, such requirements have been dis- more than the simple extension of to- will enable easier integration of work-
cussed and put down in a white paper day’s telecom networks. 5G needs to flows through standardized interfac-
[40]. An analysis of the corresponding integrate different enabling technolo- es. Each of the workflows may have
requirements shows that latency (be- gies (e.g., mobile, wired, satellite, and different requirements with respect to
low 5 ms), reliability, and density (up to optical), spectrum regulatory frame- bandwidth, latency, and availability,
100 devices/m2), along with tight con- works (e.g., licensed and unlicensed), and, as a result, the cost for network-
straints on territory and/or population and enabling capabilities (e.g., IoT, ing should be linked to the needs. In
coverage, are the most important per- CPSs). To cope with the increasing di- addition, end-to-end communication
formance targets 5G needs to achieve versity of wireless IoT systems in man- may require the integration of pub-
for supporting all possible services of ufacturing, there is the need for novel lic cellular networking technologies
the five investigated sectors. Moreover, capabilities to ensure the same level (such as 5G) with private networks
with universal availability of instanta- of reliability as offered in wired to- (such as picocells or meshed net-
neous communications, high level of pologies. Given the nondeterministic working topologies). The concepts of
guaranteed quality of service (QoS), behavior of the wireless medium, new network virtualization, SDN, and dis-
and cost levels appropriate to meet cus- challenges arise to manage the spec- tributed cloud resource management
tomers’ expectations, 5G will pave the trum, in particular in environments can be leveraged to give the factory
way for new business opportunities. where the number of wireless applica- operator a unified view on the net-
Furthermore, the requirements from tions and devices are increasing. Com- work. There is the opportunity for the
the different verticals have been inte- pared to other industries, the wireless 5G community to extend the manage-
grated into an overall vision of 5G [41]. industrial Internet has one of the most ment capabilities beyond the network-
A common structure has been devel- stringent requirements in terms of la- ing aspects and include networked
oped consisting of different layers with tencies and reliability, in particular for services for security, data analytics,
specific levels of abstraction (Figure 4). use in time-critical closed-loop com- and cloud/edge computing.
Intelligent orchestration platforms will munication scenarios. Open questions
emerge from 5G networks and 5G archi- still exist to manage Harmonization Above
tecture is expected to accommodate a ■■ coexistence of different wireless the Networks
wide range of use cases with advanced protocols and systems The previous sections showed that
requirements, especially in terms ■ ■ coexistence of different wired communication infrastructures in au-
of latency, resilience, coverage, and protocols tomation systems are complex and are
bandwidth. Another major challenge is ■■ interoperability between communi- getting even more complex and even
to provide end-to-end network and cloud cation systems more heterogeneous. Coming back to
infrastructure in the form of slices over ■■ seamless engineering, adaptive dur- the starting point of this article, i.e.,
the same physical infrastructure to fulfill ing operation (based on previously the transfer of information between
vertical-specific requirements as well collected real-life data). different entities in an industrial auto-
as mobile broadband services in paral- For enabling the coexistence of mation system, it is evident that com-
lel. Such a slice can be seen as a logical wireless technologies, new protocols munication networks alone will not
network structure with components are needed to manage the coopera- be sufficient. The actual transport of
providing application functions and ap- tion of technologies working in the information is only one aspect. Equal-
plication relations among them. They same frequency band or to spread the ly important are the description and
contain QoS requirements for the single usage over multiple frequency bands modeling of information as well as defi-
relations. A slice will be dynamically in a coordinated and adaptive way. nitions how to access it. These aspects
mapped to a (flexibly changing) network The main objective is to increase the are not fully covered in communication
march 2017 ■ IEEE industrial electronics magazine 23Vertical Slice
Vertical 1 Services Vertical 2 Services
Mobile Broadband Services (e.g., Automotive)
(e.g., Factory of the Future)
Service Service Service Service Service Service Service Service Service Business
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 Service
Layer
Vertical 2 Vertical 3
Function Function Business
24 IEEE industrial electronics magazine ■ march 2017
Repository Repository Function
Function
Vertical 1
Repository
Layer
Vertical-Centric Services
Multiservice
Interfaces
Northbound
Control Layer
Network
Network Function
Function Layer
Repository
Wireless Satellite Optical Cloud
Satellite Network Core Cloud
Edge Cloud
Interfaces
Southbound
Network-Centric Services
Infrastructure
Layer
RAN and Wireless Backhaul Optical Access Network Optical Metro Network Optical Core Network
FIGURE 4 — The integrated 5G architecture for mobile broadband and vertical services [41]. RAN: radio access network.standards, let alone treated in a harmo-
nized way. They must be tackled above
the actual networks. Business Functions
Years ago, a generic communica-
tion model was established consist-
ing of the three layers of networks,
middleware, and application [42]. This Service Service
general approach is still valid and
…
even more than before (Figure 5). The MES::Calculate
Application Functions and Energy Consumption
uppermost layer is built by the appli- Sensor::Calibrate Information Models
cation functions that need to be inter- …
connected, the middle layer covers
Services *** Services
the (partly application-agnostic) com-
Browse Subscribe … Connect
munication services and the middle-
Middleware and Communication Services,
ware management services, and the Generic Information Models
lowest layer contains the transport- Read Write … Create
oriented protocols guaranteeing the
Native APIs Services
required QoS.
Application functions and informa- Transport-Oriented Protocols
tion models are the building blocks
PROFIBUS
PROFINET
EtherCAT
6loWPAN
WLAN
for actual business functions. In the
CAN
TSN
IIoT
IRT
5G
terminology of service-oriented ar-
chitectures, the higher-level business *** *** ***
services are orchestrations of applica-
tion functions. The application func- FIGURE 5 — The three levels of industrial communication: application, communication services
and middleware, and transport protocols. API: application programming interface.
tions are more and more exposed via
services. Pushed by the Industry 4.0
idea, these services and the related
information models are under defini-
tion for different application domains Intelligent orchestration platforms will emerge
and contexts. from 5G networks.
Because the application functions
should be applicable to different re-
sources, they cannot rely on specific systems on the other hand. Depend- Moreover, such gateways could be more
communication functions directly. ing on these demands, varying along than just protocol and data conversion
Generic communication services are the functional hierarchy, the existence units, they will have to act as smart en-
required. They will be provided by the of one single system fulfilling all the tities controlling and representing the
middle layer. This layer benefits from requirements is doubtful. In addition, underlying automation (sub)system.
Internet technologies such as web ser- the resource capabilities of the con- Last but not least, they can also secure
vices or recent IoT-specific protocols. nected components need to be consid- access to parts of the system [32].
In addition, IT technologies adopted ered [45], [46]. The heterogeneity will rather in-
for automation purposes, such as OPC As described in the “The Role of 5G crease. This calls for harmonized ser-
UA, will be used here [43], [44]. Which Networks in Industrial Automation” vice layers and for network function
protocols will be used depends on the section, new technologies like 5G com- virtualization (NFV) at these lower lay-
level of functional hierarchy according munication will penetrate this level as ers. But also for these legacy systems,
to IEC 62264-1, the resource capabili- well. Will Ethernet and 5G mobile com- services and data models on the higher
ties, the QoS requested from the appli- munication replace all existing indus- levels should be consistent with the new
cation, and so forth. trial communication systems? Likely networks, so that there is some form of
The transport-oriented technologies they will not. There will still be wired uniform data exchange at the higher
like fieldbuses, industrial Ethernet, and or wireless legacy systems, which will networking layers, irrespective of the
industrial wireless approaches provide be in operation for years and maybe underlying communication systems.
a communication system guaranteeing decades to come. To interconnect all IT in automation finally seems to be
the application demands regarding reli- of these, proxies and gateways will be mature enough to meet this challenge.
ability, availability, real-time behavior, needed [47], even though one of the
and so forth on one hand, and the flex- aims of especially the development of Conclusions
ibility and (self-)adaptability of future Ethernet-based automation networks Industrial communication systems un-
industrial automation and production was to eliminate the need for gateways. derwent a long evolution with many
march 2017 ■ IEEE industrial electronics magazine 25in 1991 and a Habilitation degree in 2001
Network harmonization on a logical level for research in automation and control
system. He is a full professor at Tech-
is one of the challenges to face. nische Universität (TU) Dresden, Ger-
many, for industrial communications
and director of the Institute of Applied
influences from technologies from out- to attach less critical data points. On Computer Science, Faculty of Computer
side the actual automation domain. The top of mobile networks, however, the Science at TU Dresden. His research
fundamental requirements always re- same higher-level protocols could be topics are industrial communication
mained unchanged: to exchange infor- placed, as in the case of Ethernet. systems and automation networks, in-
mation about industrial processes in a What does this development mean formation modeling, middleware con-
timely, reliable, and possibly uniform for research and education? This, of cepts, management of heterogeneous
way. The absence of an optimum tech- course, depends largely on the view- networks, life-cycle management, and
nology to meet these goals inspired point. From an application point of semantic descriptions. He is actively
engineers and stimulated a multitude view, industrial communication needs involved in standardization activities at
of diverse and incompatible solutions, to fulfill the requirements, nothing the German Commission for Electrical,
and the calls for unified approaches else. The specific technology is mostly Electronic & Information Technologies
were heard but not heeded. Even when out of scope of end users. They will rely of DIN and VDE and with the Interna-
the technology basis shifted toward on service providers guaranteeing QoS tional Electrotechnical Commission
ICT standards, the variety of solutions for the intended application, regard- Technical Committee 65.
remained and even got worse. Is there less if this is provided by networks Thilo Sauter (thilo.sauter@tuwien
a hope that things will finally change they own themselves or by public or .ac.at) received a Ph.D. degree in elec-
back to the desirable? Perhaps there is. private networks. Network harmoni- trical engineering from TU Wien in
For the first time, the requirements zation on a logical level, by defining 1999. He is a tenured associate pro-
of industrial automation applications generic communication services and fessor of automation technology at
are taken into account in the develop- adequate information models, is one of Technische Universität Wien, Vienna,
ment of a new ICT standard. Ethernet the challenges to face. Austria, and was the founding direc-
TSN has the potential to satisfy even From a communication provider tor of the Center for Integrated Sensor
demanding requirements without the view, however, there might be still the Systems at Danube University Krems,
need of dedicated add-ons tailored to need to further optimize or even de- Wiener Neustadt, Austria. His profes-
the demands of automation. On top of velop specific industrial technologies, sional expertise includes integrated
such a novel network that can equally especially when harsh application re- circuit design, smart sensors, and
accommodate both real-time and best- quirements need to be met. The adop- automation networks with a focus on
effort traffic, existing high-level auto- tion of IoT technologies and concepts real-time, security, interconnection,
mation protocols could be placed for in automation will grow substantially. and integration issues. He is an IEEE
backward compatibility or a middle- These technologies need to be evalu- Fellow and an Administrative Com-
ware such as OPC UA that serves the ated and need to be further tailored to mittee member of the IEEE Industrial
needs of automation as far as function- industrial automation needs. For 5G, Electronics Society and the IEEE Sen-
ality and data models are concerned similar tasks can be seen. The inte- sors Council. He has been working in
but builds on established and wide- gration of end users representing the fieldbus standardization with Interna-
spread Internet technology for the com- verticals is promising. One of the main tional Electrotechnical Commission
munication services. challenges of future industrial com- Technical Committee 65 for more
The massive interest of telecom munication will be the management than 20 years and had leading posi-
industries in industrial applications is of complexity and heterogeneity. NFV tions in several national and interna-
without precedence and a direct con- and the use of SDN could be enabling tional research projects concerned
sequence of the adoption of IoT and technologies to provide a flexible with industrial communication and
CPS scenarios. Contrary to the devel- network topology and its monitoring enterprise integration.
opment of Ethernet TSN, the possible and management to meet the require- Jürgen Jasperneite ( juergen
application of 5G networks in automa- ments of the end users along the life .
jasperneite@hs-owl.de) received a
tion is not an expression of a steady cycle of an enterprise. Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineer-
evolution but indeed rather disrup- ing and information technology from
tive. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Biographies the Otto-von-Guericke-University of
5G will be able to satisfy all stringent M ar t in Woll schlae g er (ma r t in Magdeburg, Germany, in 2002. He is
automation demands for real time and .wollschlaeger@tu-dresden.de) stud- a full professor of computer networks
completely replace dedicated indus- ied electrical engineering at Otto-von- at the Ostwestfalen- Lippe (OWL)
trial automation networks. Rather, it Guericke University of Magdeburg, Ger- University of Applied Sciences and
might work as a kind of backbone or many, where he received a Ph.D. degree the founding director of the University
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