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Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 31377

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Paulo Pedreiras

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Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics Department, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Interests: distributed real-time systems; industrial communications; real-time scheduling; real-time medium access control; dynamic quality-of-service management; industrial internet of things; cyber–physical systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. João Paulo Barraca

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Guest Editor

Telecommunications Institute - Aveiro, and Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics Department, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Interests: Internet of Things; software-defined networks; services and network security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, sensing plays a crucial role in Industrial Automation by interfacing the digital and physical worlds. Sensory systems allow reading a plethora of relevant physical parameters and variables that are then used, at the digital upper layers, for multiple objectives, including control and monitoring of physical processes, maintenance and failure prediction, and resource management and process optimization.

Developing effective sensing systems in the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is especially challenging. Sensing devices must meet classic and inherent metrological requirements, being able to carry out accurate measurements, sometimes in harsh environments and conditions, while being subject to strict size, weight, and power constraints. Once acquired, data must be transmitted effectively, which implies that the networking infrastructures have to satisfy heterogeneous and often conflicting requirements, among which predictability, timeliness, reliability, security, bandwidth and energy efficiency, and integration and heterogeneity play a fundamental role. At the end of the chain, it is necessary to process, explore, and store the data effectively, and thus, emerging technologies and concepts such as Big Data and Machine and Deep Learning are of extreme importance. Finally, architectural aspects, such as how to distribute sensor data processing over the different layers, global resource management schemes and policies, and methods for assuring end-to-end QoS are also essential to allow the deployment of sensing systems able to support the requirements of emerging industrial automation applications. Orthogonal to these aspects is the security of all components and interactions, as failure to detect and block security compromises may lead to extensive losses, and even human injury. This further introduces the need for controls that keep components operating in a predictable manner.

This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest research results and advances on technologies for sensor applications in Industrial Automation; therefore, we welcome the submission of original papers presenting significant advances with respect to the state of the art, featuring a solid theoretical development and practical relevance. Topics of interest falling under the scope of Smart Factories and Industry 4.0 include but are not limited to:

Big Data, sensor data fusion data analytics;
Design principles and practices for 5G integrated factories;
Energy harvesting and power management for industrial automation;
IA, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning;
Industrial sensors, sensor virtualization, and Digital Twins;
Integration and holistic management architectures and frameworks;
Intrusion detection/prevention/prediction techniques and system integrity;
Latency restricted IIoT applications with 5G;
Localization and tracking for indoor and outdoor industrial applications;
Machine-to-Machine architectures and protocols;
Multiconnectivity through 5G;
Network slicing challenges and solutions;
Novel sensing systems, architectures, and frameworks;
Performance evaluation of industrial automation systems, platforms, and protocols;
Real-time and networked embedded systems;
Secure integration of IoT/IIoT and Cloud, Fog, and Edge Computing;
Security controls and mechanisms;
Software-defined factories;
Very-high-density 5G IIoT networks;
Web services and service-oriented architectures;
Wireless sensor networks and protocols for IoT/IIoT;
Case studies of IoT/IIoT-based SCADA applications;
Case studies.

Prof. Dr. Paulo Pedreiras
Prof. Dr. João Paulo Barraca
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

5G and beyond
Big data, sensor data fusion, data analytics
Configuration and management
Connected factories
Fault tolerance
Fog and Edge Computing
High-density networking
Industrial wireless sensor networks
Integration and Interoperability
M2M communication
Machine Learning, Deep Learning
Networked Embedded Systems
Real-time communication and applications
Safety and Security
Service Oriented Architectures
Web-based communication and applications
Case studies

Published Papers (11 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 2431 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Extending MQTT with Real-Time Communication Services Based on SDN

by Ehsan Shahri, Paulo Pedreiras and Luis Almeida

Sensors 2022, 22(9), 3162; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22093162 - 20 Apr 2022

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3262

Abstract

MQTT is one of the most popular application-layer protocols used in the scope of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT), given its suitability for resource-constrained embedded systems. However, MQTT Quality-of-Service policies do not support timeliness requirements, which is common in IIoT. The literature reports several research works that address this limitation, but they are limited in scope (e.g., improvements in the broker’s internal operation, control of the publisher’s data rate, and path optimizations). Conversely, this paper presents a comprehensive architectural approach, proposing a set of extensions to the MQTT protocol that allow applications to explicitly specify real-time requirements and instantiate corresponding network reservations to enforce the desired temporal behavior. Such reservations are enforced via Software Defined Networking, specifically the OpenFlow protocol, but other protocols that allow bandwidth reservations, e.g., TSN, can also be used. This paper presents the proposed system architecture together with extensive emulation and implementation results that validate the feasibility of the approach, showing that time-sensitive MQTT traffic can be effectively segregated and prioritized to meet application-defined real-time requirements. Using several combinations of network topologies and load levels and comparing to the absence of the proposed real-time mechanisms, both average and worst-case latencies of the time-sensitive traffic decreased to approximately half, while for the normal traffic, they increased by approximately 10%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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19 pages, 3852 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimal Relay Network for Aerial Remote Inspections

by Luis Ramos Pinto and Luis Almeida

Sensors 2022, 22(4), 1391; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22041391 - 11 Feb 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1452

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in particular multirotors, are becoming the de facto tool for aerial sensing and remote inspection. In large industrial facilities, a UAV can transmit an online video stream to inspect difficult-to-access structures, such as chimneys, deposits, and towers. However, the communication range is limited, constraining the UAV operation range. This limitation can be overcome with relaying UAVs placed between the source UAV and the control station, creating a line of communication links. In this work, we assume the use of a digital data packet network technology, namely WiFi, and tackle the problem of defining the exact placement for the relaying UAVs that creates an end-to-end channel with maximal delivery of data packets. We consider asymmetric communication links and we show an increase as large as 15% in end-to-end packet delivery ratio when compared to an equidistant placement. We also discuss the deployment of such a network and propose a fully distributed method that converges to the global optimal relay positions taking, on average,

1.4

times the time taken by a centralized method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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32 pages, 868 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reliability Analysis of the Proactive Transmission of Replicated Frames Mechanism over Time-Sensitive Networking

by Inés Álvarez, Manuel Barranco and Julián Proenza

Sensors 2021, 21(24), 8427; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21248427 - 17 Dec 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1888

Abstract

The Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group has standardised different mechanisms to provide Ethernet with hard real-time guarantees and reliability in layer 2 of the network architecture. Specifically, TSN proposes using space redundancy to increase the reliability of Ethernet networks, but using space redundancy to tolerate temporary faults is not a cost-effective solution. For this reason, we propose to use time redundancy to tolerate temporary faults in the links of TSN-based networks. Specifically, in previous works we proposed the Proactive Transmission of Replicated Frames (PTRF) mechanism to tolerate temporary faults in the links. Now, in this work we present a series of models of TSN and PTRF developed using PRISM, a probabilistic model checker that can be used to evaluate the reliability of systems. After that, we carry out a parametric sensitivity analysis of the reliability achievable by TSN and PTRF and we show that we can increase the reliability of TSN-based networks using PTRF to tolerate temporary faults in the links of TSN networks. This is the first work that presents a quantitative analysis of the reliability of TSN networks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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16 pages, 2101 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Pervasive Digital Twin for PI-Containers: A New Packing Problem

by Patrick Charpentier, Frédéric Chaxel, Nicolas Krommenacker, Vincent Bombardier and Fabian Seguel

Sensors 2021, 21(23), 7999; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21237999 - 30 Nov 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1744

Abstract

The idea defended in this paper consists in finding, at any time and everywhere, the arrangement of containers within a composite container. The digital image of the real arrangement obtained defines its digital twin. This image evolves at the same time as its real twin. It can be used throughout the logistics chain during loading/unloading phases in hubs, to check the completeness of a load, to find the particular position of a container, etc. This digital twin is obtained through the collection of neighborhood information from the sensor nodes embedded on each container. This embedded solution allows accessibility to this information everywhere. This proximity information and the instrumentation of the containers define new types of constraints and a new version of a packing problem. We propose here a model integrating them. This model is implemented and tested on different test cases, and numerical results are provided. These show that, under certain conditions that will be presented, it is possible to obtain the digital twin of the real arrangement. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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19 pages, 975 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Unfairness of Random Access with Collision Avoidance in Industrial Internet of Things Networks

by Marek Miśkowicz

Sensors 2021, 21(21), 7135; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21217135 - 27 Oct 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1933

Abstract

This paper is focused on the analysis of unfairness of random media access in Local Operating Networks (LON), which is one of the commercial platforms of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The unfairness in accessing the LON channel is introduced by a collision avoidance mechanism in the predictive p-persistent CSMA protocol adopted at the media access control layer. The study on the bandwidth share in predictive p-persistent CSMA calls for the analysis of multiple memoryless backoff. In this paper, it is shown that the channel access in LON systems is unfair in the short term for medium traffic load conditions, and in the long term for heavy loaded networks. Furthermore, it is explained that the average bandwidth allocated to a particular node is determined implicitly by the load scenario, while an actual node bandwidth fluctuates in time according to stochastic dynamics of the predictive p-persistent CSMA. Next, it is formally proven that the average bandwidth available to a node is a linear function of its backoff state and does not depend on backoff states of the other stations. Finally, it is demonstrated that possibly unfair bandwidth share in LON networks determined implicitly by load scenario is stable because, with lowering a fraction of actual network bandwidth accessible by a given station, the probability to decrease it in the future also drops. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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28 pages, 22542 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Enhancing SDN WISE with Slicing Over TSCH

by Federico Orozco-Santos, Víctor Sempere-Payá, Teresa Albero-Albero and Javier Silvestre-Blanes

Sensors 2021, 21(4), 1075; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21041075 - 04 Feb 2021

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 2966

Abstract

IWSNs (Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks) have become the next step in the evolution of WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) due to the nature and demands of modern industry. With this type of network, flexible and scalable architectures can be created that simultaneously support traffic sources with different characteristics. Due to the great diversity of application scenarios, there is a need to implement additional capabilities that can guarantee an adequate level of reliability and that can adapt to the dynamic behavior of the applications in use. The use of SDNs (Software Defined Networks) extends the possibilities of control over the network and enables its deployment at an industrial level. The signaling traffic exchanged between nodes and controller is heavy and must occupy the same channel as the data traffic. This difficulty can be overcome with the segmentation of the traffic into flows, and correct scheduling at the MAC (Medium Access Control) level, known as slices. This article proposes the integration in the SDN controller of a traffic manager, a routing process in charge of assigning different routes according to the different flows, as well as the introduction of the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) Scheduler. In addition, the TSCH (Time Slotted Channel Hopping) is incorporated in the SDN-WISE framework (Software Defined Networking solution for Wireless Sensor Networks), and this protocol has been modified to send the TSCH schedule. These elements are jointly responsible for scheduling and segmenting the traffic that will be sent to the nodes through a single packet from the controller and its performance has been evaluated through simulation and a testbed. The results obtained show how flexibility, adaptability, and determinism increase thanks to the joint use of the routing process and the TSCH Scheduler, which makes it possible to create a slicing by flows, which have different quality of service requirements. This in turn helps guarantee their QoS characteristics, increase the PDR (Packet Delivery Ratio) for the flow with the highest priority, maintain the DMR (Deadline Miss Ratio), and increase the network lifetime. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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29 pages, 945 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design and Experimental Evaluation of the Proactive Transmission of Replicated Frames Mechanism over Time-Sensitive Networking

by Inés Álvarez, Ignasi Furió, Julián Proenza and Manuel Barranco

Sensors 2021, 21(3), 756; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21030756 - 23 Jan 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2066

Abstract

In recent years the Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group (TG) has been working on proposing a series of standards to provide Ethernet with hard real-time guarantees, online management of the traffic and fault tolerance mechanisms. In this way the TG expects to create the network technology of future novel applications with real-time and reliability requirements. TSN proposes using spatial redundancy to increase the reliability of Ethernet networks, but using spatial redundancy to tolerate temporary faults is not a cost-effective solution. For this reason, we propose to use time redundancy to tolerate temporary faults in the links of TSN-based networks. Specifically, we have proposed the Proactive Transmission of Replicated Frames (PTRF) mechanism, which consists in transmitting several copies of each frame in a preventive manner. In this article we present for the first time a detailed description of the mechanism, with the three different approaches we have designed. We also present the implementation of PTRF in a real TSN prototype. Furthermore, we carry out a qualitative comparison of the different approaches of the mechanism and we experimentally evaluate the approaches of the mechanism in a quantitative manner from three perspectives: the end-to-end delay, the jitter and the bandwidth consumption. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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20 pages, 10038 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving the Ambient Temperature Control Performance in Smart Homes and Buildings

by Fernando Fontes, Rómulo Antão, Alexandre Mota and Paulo Pedreiras

Sensors 2021, 21(2), 423; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21020423 - 09 Jan 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2740

Abstract

Currently, it is becoming increasingly common to find numerous electronic devices installed in office and residential spaces as part of building automation solutions. These devices provide a rich set of data related to the inside and outside environment, such as indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, and solar radiation. However, commercial of-the-shelf climatic control systems continue to rely on simple controllers like proportional-integral-derivative or even on-off, which do not take into account such variables. This work evaluates the potential performance gains of adopting more advanced controllers, in this case based on pole-placement, enhanced with additional variables, namely solar radiation and external temperature, obtained with dedicated low-cost sensors. This approach is evaluated both in simulated and real-world environments. The obtained results show that pole-placement controllers clearly outperform on-off controllers and that the use of the additional variables in pole-placement controllers allows relevant performance gains in key parameters such as error signal MSE (17%) and control signal variance (40%), when compared with simple PP controllers. The observed energy consumption savings obtained by using the additional variables are marginal (≈1%, but the reduction of the error signal MSE and control signal variance have a significant impact on energy consumption peaks and on equipment lifetime, thus largely compensating the increase in the system complexity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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20 pages, 884 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A New Association Scheme for Handling Node Mobility in Cluster-Tree Wireless Sensor Networks

by Rogério Casagrande, Ricardo Moraes, Carlos Montez, Francisco Vasques and Erico Leão

Sensors 2020, 20(19), 5694; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s20195694 - 06 Oct 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1661

Abstract

Node mobility in multi-hop communication environments is an important feature of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)-based monitoring systems. It allows nodes to have freedom of movement, without being restricted to a single-hop communication range. In IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs, nodes are only able to transfer data messages after completing a connection with a coordinator through an association mechanism. Within this context, a handover procedure needs to be executed by a mobile node whenever there is a disconnection from a coordinator and the establishment of a connection to another one. Many applications, such as those found in health monitoring systems, strongly need support for node mobility without loss of data during the handover. However, it has been observed that the time required to execute the handover procedure is one of the main reasons why IEEE 802.15.4 cannot fully support mobility. This paper proposes an improvement to this procedure using a set of combined strategies, such as anticipation of both the handover mechanism and the scan phase enhancement. Simulations show that it is possible to reduce latency during the association and re-association processes, making it feasible to develop WSN-based distributed monitoring systems with mobile nodes and stringent time constraints. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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30 pages, 1284 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Denoising Autoencoders and LSTM-Based Artificial Neural Networks Data Processing for Its Application to Internal Model Control in Industrial Environments—The Wastewater Treatment Plant Control Case

by Ivan Pisa, Antoni Morell, Jose Lopez Vicario and Ramon Vilanova

Sensors 2020, 20(13), 3743; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s20133743 - 04 Jul 2020

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4626

Abstract

The evolution of industry towards the Industry 4.0 paradigm has become a reality where different data-driven methods are adopted to support industrial processes. One of them corresponds to Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), which are able to model highly complex and non-linear processes. This motivates their adoption as part of new data-driven based control strategies. The ANN-based Internal Model Controller (ANN-based IMC) is an example which takes advantage of the ANNs characteristics by modelling the direct and inverse relationships of the process under control with them. This approach has been implemented in Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP), where results show a significant improvement on control performance metrics with respect to (w.r.t.) the WWTP default control strategy. However, this structure is very sensible to non-desired effects in the measurements—when a real scenario showing noise-corrupted data is considered, the control performance drops. To solve this, a new ANN-based IMC approach is designed with a two-fold objective, improve the control performance and denoise the noise-corrupted measurements to reduce the performance degradation. Results show that the proposed structure improves the control metrics, (the Integrated Absolute Error (IAE) and the Integrated Squared Error (ISE)), around a 21.25% and a 54.64%, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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Review

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22 pages, 8576 KiB

Open AccessReview

Industry 4.0: A Proposal of Paradigm Organization Schemes from a Systematic Literature Review

by Cristian Rocha-Jácome, Ramón González Carvajal, Fernando Muñoz Chavero, Esteban Guevara-Cabezas and Eduardo Hidalgo Fort

Sensors 2022, 22(1), 66; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22010066 - 23 Dec 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4668

Abstract

Currently, the concept of Industry 4.0 is well known; however, it is extremely complex, as it is constantly evolving and innovating. It includes the participation of many disciplines and areas of knowledge as well as the integration of many technologies, both mature and emerging, but working in collaboration and relying on their study and implementation under the novel criteria of Cyber–Physical Systems. This study starts with an exhaustive search for updated scientific information of which a bibliometric analysis is carried out with results presented in different tables and graphs. Subsequently, based on the qualitative analysis of the references, we present two proposals for the schematic analysis of Industry 4.0 that will help academia and companies to support digital transformation studies. The results will allow us to perform a simple alternative analysis of Industry 4.0 to understand the functions and scope of the integrating technologies to achieve a better collaboration of each area of knowledge and each professional, considering the potential and limitations of each one, supporting the planning of an appropriate strategy, especially in the management of human resources, for the successful execution of the digital transformation of the industry. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Applications in Industrial Automation)

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