Application of the Fog computing paradigm to Smart Factories and cyber-physical systems

Abstract

Since the invention of the steam engine in the 18th century, innovation drove the development of industrial processes. The next industrial revolution will form an ecosystem of over 20 billion connected devices with unforeseeable influence to the gross domestic product by 2020, and connected assets will generate about 44ZB of data, which pose interesting challenges related to privacy, connectivity, scalability, and others. A current line of action that leads to this direction is the development of cyber-physical systems; considered as the coupling of physical processes and the digital world, its influence in the next industrial revolution is essential. In this work, we discuss its implementation, taking the Fog computing paradigm into consideration. As a starting point, we are extending a standard-compliant machine-to-machine communication architecture to support container-based orchestration mechanisms to enable cyber-physical systems to be programmable, autonomous, and to communicate peer-to-peer. As the primary field of application, we are considering Industrial Internet domains in general and Smart Factory environments in particular. In this paper, we present an architecture for Fog Nodes, as well a more in-depth discussion on the orchestration system and programmable characteristics of the Fog Node. On the basis of a simulation model, we show the advantages of having a programmable Fog Node supported by an orchestration system. Finally, we open a discussion about our solution and its application in the field of Smart Factories.