The Internet of Things (IoT) is a vast collection of interconnected sensors, devices, and services that share data and information over the Internet with the objective of leveraging multiple information sources to optimize related systems. The technologies associated with the IoT have significantly improved the quality of many existing applications by reducing costs, improving functionality, increasing access to resources, and enhancing automation. The adoption of IoT by industries has led to the next industrial revolution: Industry 4.0. The rise of the Industrial IoT (IIoT) promises to enhance factory management, process optimization, worker safety, and more. However, the rollout of the IIoT is not without significant issues, and many of these act as major barriers that prevent fully achieving the vision of Industry 4.0. One major area of concern is the security and privacy of the massive datasets that are captured and stored, which may leak information about intellectual property, trade secrets, and other competitive knowledge. As a way forward toward solving security and privacy concerns, we aim in this paper to identify common input-output (I/O) design patterns that exist in applications of the IIoT. These design patterns enable constructing an abstract model representation of data flow semantics used by such applications, and therefore better understand how to secure the information related to IIoT operations. In this paper, we describe communication protocols and identify common I/O design patterns for IIoT applications with an emphasis on data flow in edge devices, which, in the industrial control system (ICS) setting, are most often involved in process control or monitoring.
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O-RAN Perspective on Industrial Internet of Things: A SWOT Analysis
Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming increasingly popular due to its ability to connect machines and enable an ecosystem for new applications and use cases. One such use case is industrial loT (1IoT) that refers to the application of loT in industrial settings especially engaging instrumentation and control of sensors and machines with Cloud technologies. Industries are counting on the fifth generation (5G) of mobile communications to provide seamless, ubiquitous and flexible connectivity among machines, people and sensors. The open radio access network (O-RAN) architecture adds additional interfaces and RAN intelligent controllers that can be leveraged to meet the IIoT service requirements. In this paper, we examine the connectivity requirements for IIoT that are dominated by two industrial applications: control and monitoring. We present the strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis of O-RAN for IIoT and provide a use case example which illustrates how O-RAN can support diverse and changing IIoT network services. We conclude that the flexibility of the O-RAN architecture, which supports the latest cellular network standards and services, provides a path forward for next generation IIoT network design, deployment, customization, and maintenance. It offers more control but still lacks products-hardware and software-that are exhaustively tested in production like environments.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2120442
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10461857
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2023 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 6
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIT58465.2023.10143032
