Network models for the industrial intranet

Abstract

During the last half century, we have seen several innovations in industrial communication, from the introduction of 4-20mA signals, over digital fieldbuses to Industrial Ethernet and meshed Wireless Sensor Networks. These innovations met the demand for a higher degree of standardization, larger plants, and an increasing number of vertical applications inside the automation systems. With the Industrial Internet of Things, the number of communication nodes inside a plant will further increase, and seamless access to data will require an unprecedented degree of flexibility when it comes to configuring industrial IoT networks. Before setting out to define a reference architechture for IoT network management, it makes sense to do a stock-taking of the existing technologies, which have grown over the last decades and include a collection of vendor- and technology-specific solutions. In this paper, we summarize the constraints and requirements for network orchestration in IoT-centric automation systems, and we assess the state of the art against these requirements. At the dawn of Industrial IoT, the objective of this analysis is create a common understanding between IT and automation domains on the needs of industrial network management.