Software Architecture Solution Based on SDN for an Industrial IoT Scenario

Abstract

The Industry 4.0 (I4.0) adoption comprises the change of traditional factories intosmartusing the ICTs. The goal is to monitor processes, objects, machinery, and workers in order to have real-time knowledge about what is going on in the factory and for achieving an efficient data collection, management, and decision-making that help improve the businesses in terms of product quality, productivity, and efficiency. Internet of Things (IoT) will have an important role in the I4.0 adoption because future smart factories are expected to rely on IoT infrastructures composed of constellations of hundreds or thousands of sensor devices spread all over the industrial facilities. However, some problems could arise in the massive IoT deployment in a medium-high factory: thousands of IoT devices to cope from different technologies and vendors could mean dozens of vendor tools and user interfaces to manage them. Moreover, the heterogeneity of IoT devices could entail different communication protocols, languages, and data formats, which can result in lack of interoperability. On the other hand, conventional IT networks and industrial machinery are expected to be managed together with the IoT infrastructure, maybe using a tool or a set of tools, fororchestratingthe whole smart factory. This work meets these challenges presenting an open-source software architecture solution based on OpenDaylight (ODL), a Software Defined Network (SDN) controller, for orchestrating an industrial IoT scenario. This work is addressed by shedding light on critical aspects from the SDN controller architectural choices, to specific IoT interfaces and the difficulties for covering the wide range of communication protocols, popular in industrial contexts. Such a global view of the process gives light to practical difficulties appearing in introducing SDN in industrial contexts, providing an open-source architecture solution that guarantees devices and networks interoperability and scalability, breaking the vendor lock-in barriers and providing a vendor-agnostic solution for orchestrating all actor of an I4.0 smart factory.

Dl-Dp

“…Software defined network for IIoT security. Software defined network (SDN) was first introduced to facilitate networks management in the cloud environment [32], and then extended to IIoT systems [30]. Chaudhary et al proposed an SDN-IIoT communication model with attribute-based encryption to protect communication between IIoT devices [9].…”

SDN Enhanced Resource Orchestration of Containerized Edge Applications for Industrial IoT

“…2. A plugin called IoTDM 2 is a dedicated IoT plugin specially designed to manage and store data generated by IoT device according to oneM2M 3 standard [23]. This IoTDM plugin is able to integrate to ODL southbound API and transfer data in both directions between the southbound and northbound.…”

“…The oneM2M provides a standardized interface for managing and interacting with user applications. In [23], authors proposed a software architecture based on the oneM2M standard and using a system of plugins to This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited.…”

Contributing to the planning and deployment of enabling technologies for Smart Cities and Smart Factories

“…The candidate was hired with funds of this project for 24 months (April 2017 to March 2019). The contributions the candidate developed in the framework of this project were: [Bueno17], [Romero17], [Bueno17b], [Romero18], [Romero18a], [Bueno19], [Romero20].…”

“…The academic contributions in which the candidate has participated within the context of the thesis have been [Romero18], [Romero18a], [Bueno19] , [Romero19], [Romero19a], [Troia19], [Garrich20], [Garrich20b].…”