Optical transport for Industry 4.0 [Invited]

Abstract

Industry 4.0 represents a new industrial revolution that will dramatically change the landscape in many sectors, including manufacturing and logistics. Robotics, machine intelligence, and new forms of connectivity are key ingredients of this paradigm. 5G mobile networks are expected to play a crucial role, supporting a lower cost per transported bit in air and a lower latency compared with 4G. 5G radio ensures different performance levels in very heterogeneous coverage situations, including a mix of indoor and outdoor contexts. Mobile network evolution requires new transport networks to address the new challenging requirements: increasing transmission capacity, compatibility with latency-critical applications, significantly reduced cost with respect to conventional metro network segments, lower energy consumption, and, in some cases, switching capabilities. Optical communications and networking will play a key role in these new transport scenarios, where tailored transmission techniques and network architectures are needed. This paper discusses the requirements and challenges that Industry 4.0 scenarios pose to optical communications and networking architectures. Performance of optical transmission schemes, tailored to support these new radio access networks, are detailed and benchmarked. A network test bed, focused on transport for vertical use cases, is described. Experimental results demonstrate the compliance of the proposed optical transport network with a latency-critical cloud robotics application, which presents industry-grade connectivity needs.

LiFi Positioning for Industry 4.0

“…Our LiFi positioning system leverages information which can be obtained from preambles already embedded in the existing PHY packet structure for synchronization and channel estimation while using the existing frontends and PHY layer signal processing in the existing LiFi systems based on the ITU recommendation G.9991. Our technique provides significantly improved accuracy compared to Wi-Fi based solutions and can, thus, satisfy the requirements of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) [8], [9], [10], [11]. The deployment of positioning-enhanced LiFi systems fits nicely to assist the transition to smart factories which desire reliable and secure wireless communication as well as accurate positioning toward enhancing the productivity, efficiency, and flexibility of the entire production process.…”

Design and implementation of trusted production lines based on active metric control technology for optical access networks

“…), will require specific telecommunication architectures based on new forms of optical transport. 3 In current passive optical network (PON) implementations, authentication and encryption are optional, where encryption is only used for downstream communication from the OLT to the ONU, using only plain text keys exchanged during initialization, and possible security threats; 4 mainly eavesdropping, DoS, spoofing attacks and degradation attacks. 5 After years of development, the concept and connotation of trusted computing have also been greatly enriched, such as the Trusted Platform Module 2.0 standard specification implemented by the Trusted Computing Group, 6 the Trusted Cryptography Module(TCM)1.0/2.0, Trusted Platform Control Module(TPCM) architecture, 7 etc.…”

Hybrid POF/VLC Links Based on a Single LED for Indoor Communications

“…Future smart factories in Industry 4.0 will require fast and reliable wireless connectivity to provide automation and real-time control of equipment [1]. Optical wireless communication (OWC) is a promising technology for enabling such industrial transformation [2,3] since it offers a huge amount of unregulated bandwidth, high security, low latency, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. However, OWC links are based on line-of-sight (LOS) signal reception, and therefore the blockage of direct transmission by shadowing or obstacles is its main disadvantage.…”