An Effective Communication Prototype for Time-Critical IIoT Manufacturing Factories Using Zero-Loss Redundancy Protocols, Time-Sensitive Networking, and Edge-Computing in an Industry 4.0 Environment

Abstract

The Industrial Internet of things (IIoT), the implementation of IoT in the industrial sector, requires a deterministic, real-time, and low-latency communication response for its time-critical applications. A delayed response in such applications could be life-threatening or result in significant losses for manufacturing plants. Although several measures in the likes of predictive maintenance are being put in place to prevent errors and guarantee high network availability, unforeseen failures of physical components are almost inevitable. Our research contribution is to design an efficient communication prototype, entirely based on internet protocol (IP) that combines state-of-the-art communication computing technologies principles to deliver a more stable industrial communication network. We use time-sensitive networking (TSN) and edge computing to increase the determinism of IIoT networks, and we reduce latency with zero-loss redundancy protocols that ensure the sustainability of IIoT networks with smooth recovery in case of unplanned outages. Combining these technologies altogether brings more effectiveness to communication networks than implementing standalone systems. Our study results develop two experimental IP-based industrial network communication prototypes in an intra-domain transmission scenario: the first one is based on the parallel zero-loss redundancy protocol (PRP) and the second one using the high-availability seamless zero-loss redundancy protocol (HSR). We also highlight the benefits of utilizing our communication prototypes to build robust industrial IP communication networks with high network availability and low latency as opposed to conventional communication networks running on seldom redundancy protocols such as Media Redundancy Protocol (MRP) or Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) with single-point of failure and delayed recovery time. While our two network communication prototypes—HSR and PRP—offer zero-loss recovery time in case of a single network failure, our PRP communication prototype goes a step further by providing an effective redundancy scheme against multiple link failures.

Run-Time Reconfiguration Strategy and Implementation of Time-Triggered Networks

“…In practical avionics or industrial applications, seamless reconfiguration for TT flows is often done using redundant protocols. Parallel Redundancy Protocol(PRP) is used in TTE, such as Lunar Gateway adopted triple redundancy to ensure that the communication of TT flows can still be guaranteed when any of two redundant networks fail [32,33]. The current seamless reconfiguration approach of TSN is usually performed based on Frame Replication and Elimination (FRER) protocol by setting the redundancy level (RL) for different critical levels of communication tasks to ensure that these communication tasks are transmitted through disjointed RL paths [34], thus RL-1 single point of failure can be avoided.…”

Strategies for Assuring Low Latency, Scalability and Interoperability in Edge Computing and TSN Networks for Critical IIoT Services

“…Among the works found, it is worth highlighting the work [13], which it proposes the integration of TSN networks for IIoT services, defining realtime configuration heuristics for the optimization of traffic generated by sensors and actuators within an IoT model industry. In addition, in [24], the authors propose an efficient communication prototype that uses time-sensitive networking (TSN) and edge computing to reduce latency with zeroloss redundancy protocols that ensure the sustainability of IIoT networks with smooth recovery in case of unplanned outages. However, this work, in comparison with our proposal, only refers to analyze latency and lacks of analyzing the queue behavior and jitter in these kind of networks.…”

Implementation of Dual Internet Links for Industrial IoT to Provide Safe Digital Commands for Process Automations

“…Several references are surveyed and studied to discover what has yet to be covered in the area of Industrial IoT. The references [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] focus on the redundancy in Industrial IoT systems. Those references introduce redundancy types in network communication layers and other area networks (LAN, WAN, and LPWAN).…”