The FORA Fog Computing Platform for Industrial IoT

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Fog Computing Platform architecture tailored for Industrial IoT, addressing the need for dependable, real-time, and secure computation close to industrial operations, unlike traditional cloud solutions.

Contribution

It proposes a comprehensive reference architecture for Fog Computing in Industrial IoT, integrating deterministic virtualization, open standards, resource management, and security mechanisms.

Findings

Architecture supports critical control and dynamic applications

Uses AADL for modeling and evaluation with industrial use cases

Addresses non-functional requirements like dependability and timeliness

Abstract

Industry 4.0 will only become a reality through the convergence of Operational and Information Technologies (OT & IT), which use different computation and communication technologies. Cloud Computing cannot be used for OT involving industrial applications, since it cannot guar-antee stringent non-functional requirements, e.g., dependability, trustworthiness and timeliness. Instead, a new computing paradigm, called Fog Computing, is envisioned as an architectural means to realize the IT/OT convergence. In this paper we propose a Fog Computing Platform (FCP) reference architecture targeting Industrial IoT applications. The FCP is based on: deter-ministic virtualization that reduces the effort required for safety and security assurance; middle-ware for supporting both critical control and dynamic Fog applications; deterministic networking and interoperability, using open standards such as IEEE 802.1 Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA); mechanisms for resource management and or-chestration; and services for security, fault tolerance and distributed machine learning. We pro-pose a methodology for the definition and the evaluation of the reference architecture. We use the Architecture Analysis Design Language (AADL) to model the FCP reference architecture, and a set of industrial use cases to evaluate its suitability for the Industrial IoT area.