No abstract

Wireless communication has gained more interest in industrial automation due to flexibility, mobility, and cost reduction. Wireless systems, in general, require additional and different engineering and maintenance tasks, for example cryptographic key management. This is an important aspect that needs to be addressed before wireless systems can be deployed and maintained efficiently in the industry. In this paper, we take an holistic approach that addresses safety and security regardless of the underlying media. In our proposed framework we introduce security modules which can be retrofitted to provide end-to-end integrity and authentication measures by utilizing the black channel concept. With the proposed approach, we can extend and provide end-to-end security as well as functional safety using existing automation equipment and standards, such as Profisafe, Profinet IO, and WirelessHART. Furthermore, we improve the WirelessHART standard with periodic and deterministic downlink transmissions to enable efficient usage of wireless actuators, as well as improving the performance of functional safety protocols.

Abstract-With the growing interest in adoption of wireless technologies in industrial automation and the continuous search for new revenue streams new players are entering the arena in order to make their business grow further. One of the emerging wireless technologies aiming to support industrial automation applications is 5G, targeting anything from extreme throughput (> 10 Gbit/s) to extreme low latency (≤ 1 ms) to ultra high reliability (≥ 99.999%). In this article we intend to discuss the potential and challenges of adopting 5G in real industrial environments and give a more balanced picture compared to previous articles mainly written by telecom researchers and vendors as a way to promote their technology. Specifically, this article will discuss and provide some real industrial requirements, describe the main technical features of 5G and try to assess what applications it will support that are not by already supported by existing technologies. In the end, the success of 5G will depend on appealing business models and scalability, i.e., whether or not the same equipment can be deployed worldwide without any changes and spectrum rules, and the migration paths beyond 5G for reasonable business risks.

No abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is captivating the society because of its potential to rapidly transform businesses and people's lives. It is widely believed that IoT will also transform the industrial automation business in terms of improved productivity, less cost, flexibility, and increased revenues. Hence, there are some challenges that needs to be addressed when IoT is introduced to the industrial automation domain. This paper aims to present realistic requirements and highlights identified challenges such as security, interoperability, deterministic and low latency communication, and how the required availability (uptime) can be kept. Moreover, the paper also point out the need of standardization and sustainable business models. The conclusion is that introducing IoT devices and connecting them directly to cloud services is not straightforward for process automation.