Fedullo Tommaso, Morato Alberto, Tramarin Federico, Rovati Luigi, Vitturi Stefano
Department of Engineering "Enzo Ferrari", University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 41125 Modena, Italy.
Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, S. S. Nicola 3, 36100 Vicenza, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Feb 19;22(4):1638. doi: 10.3390/s22041638.
The groundbreaking transformations triggered by the Industry 4.0 paradigm have dramatically reshaped the requirements for control and communication systems within the factory systems of the future. The aforementioned technological revolution strongly affects industrial smart and distributed measurement systems as well, pointing to ever more integrated and intelligent equipment devoted to derive accurate measurements. Moreover, as factory automation uses ever wider and complex smart distributed measurement systems, the well-known Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm finds its viability also in the industrial context, namely Industrial IoT (IIoT). In this context, communication networks and protocols play a key role, directly impacting on the measurement accuracy, causality, reliability and safety. The requirements coming both from Industry 4.0 and the IIoT, such as the coexistence of time-sensitive and best effort traffic, the need for enhanced horizontal and vertical integration, and interoperability between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT), fostered the development of enhanced communication subsystems. Indeed, established technologies, such as Ethernet and Wi-Fi, widespread in the consumer and office fields, are intrinsically non-deterministic and unable to support critical traffic. In the last years, the IEEE 802.1 Working Group defined an extensive set of standards, comprehensively known as Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), aiming at reshaping the Ethernet standard to support for time-, mission- and safety-critical traffic. In this paper, a comprehensive overview of the TSN Working Group standardization activity is provided, while contextualizing TSN within the complex existing industrial technological panorama, particularly focusing on industrial distributed measurement systems. In particular, this paper has to be considered a technical review of the most important features of TSN, while underlining its applicability to the measurement field. Furthermore, the adoption of TSN within the Wi-Fi technology is addressed in the last part of the survey, since wireless communication represents an appealing opportunity in the industrial measurement context. In this respect, a test case is presented, to point out the need for wirelessly connected sensors networks. In particular, by reviewing some literature contributions it has been possible to show how wireless technologies offer the flexibility necessary to support advanced mobile IIoT applications.
工业4.0范式引发的突破性变革极大地重塑了未来工厂系统中控制和通信系统的要求。上述技术革命也强烈影响着工业智能和分布式测量系统，促使人们致力于开发更加集成化和智能化的设备以获取精确测量结果。此外，随着工厂自动化采用越来越广泛和复杂的智能分布式测量系统，著名的物联网（IoT）范式在工业领域，即工业物联网（IIoT）中也找到了其可行性。在此背景下，通信网络和协议起着关键作用，直接影响测量的准确性、因果关系、可靠性和安全性。来自工业4.0和工业物联网的要求，如对时间敏感型和尽力而为型流量共存的需求、增强水平和垂直集成的需求以及信息技术（IT）与运营技术（OT）之间的互操作性需求，推动了增强型通信子系统的发展。事实上，在消费和办公领域广泛应用的以太网和Wi-Fi等现有技术本质上是非确定性的，无法支持关键流量。近年来，IEEE 802.1工作组定义了一系列广泛的标准，统称为时间敏感网络（TSN），旨在重塑以太网标准以支持对时间、任务和安全至关重要的流量。本文全面概述了TSN工作组的标准化活动，同时将TSN置于复杂的现有工业技术全景中进行背景分析，特别关注工业分布式测量系统。具体而言，本文应被视为对TSN最重要特性的技术综述，同时强调其在测量领域的适用性。此外，在调查的最后部分讨论了TSN在Wi-Fi技术中的应用，因为无线通信在工业测量环境中是一个有吸引力的机会。在这方面，给出了一个测试案例，以指出无线连接传感器网络的必要性。特别是，通过回顾一些文献贡献，可以展示无线技术如何提供支持先进移动工业物联网应用所需的灵活性。
