Page 109 - Kaleidoscope Academic Conference Proceedings 2021

FUTURE INDUSTRIAL NETWORKS:
REQUIREMENTS, CHALLENGES, RESEARCH AND STANDARDIZATION NEEDS

1
Marco Carugi ; Zhe Lou 2
1 Huawei Technologies European Research Center, France
2 Huawei Technologies European Research Center, Germany

ABSTRACT  Machine-to-machine communications for industrial and
robotic automation are at the heart of the next industrial
Digital transformation is affecting most industries. A large revolution commonly referred to as "Industry 4.0" [2] [3]
spectrum of applications is expected to be deployed in future [4].
industrial networks, with emerging industrial applications
that include smart grid, flexible manufacturing, remote  Holograms, haptics, and other sensory data will provide
mining and others. The support of these applications by the immersive and "real" user experience, enhancing the
underlying network infrastructures raises critical network experience when media is consumed and facilitating
challenges: demands for large-scale deterministic interactions of users.
networking, increased network security, reliability and  Failsafe network services enabling mission-critical
privacy support, as well as flexible addressing and routing applications such as self-driving vehicles and drones, all
capabilities, requiring fundamental advances in terms of communicating with one another and their environment,
networking technologies, with consequent needs of further will allow the infrastructure to rapidly adapt and react to
network research and standardization efforts. unexpected events.
This paper aims to provide an overview of critical network  Diverse applications, in their deployment environments,
challenges to be addressed in order to satisfy requirements will be able to leverage different types of network
of future industrial network applications. Networking communications, not only land communications, but also
technology areas whose advances are fundamental in order air, space and sea communications. As examples, remote
to address the identified challenges are introduced. mining applications and emergency/disaster recovery
Requirements for network research and standardization are applications, supported by integrated space-air-land
highlighted. networks, will operate in difficult environmental contexts
such as deserts, mountains, polluted areas and disaster
Keywords – Flexible addressing, industrial applications, areas.
industrial networks, intrinsic security, privacy, semantic
routing, time determinism  New applications consuming networking services will
flourish, many of them driven by Artificial Intelligence
(AI) and depending on myriads of data feeds; they might
1. INTRODUCTION
also involve novel mixes of humans, machines, and IT
systems communicating with one another.
Future advances in networking technologies will be driven
by future applications.  Accountability, in the form of evidence that actions were
taken in delivering a service in conformance with the
Digital transformation is affecting most industries, for agreement, will be key as often stringent service
instance, enabling industrial manufacturing through novel requirements directly impact operational and
means for virtual and augmented reality or transforming maintenance costs.
education through full-view holographic multimedia. And  While many future applications will be characterized by
the communication requirements of such digitalization are their need for high precision networking services, other
seen to accelerate the already changing focus from human- classes of applications will be distortion tolerant, with an
oriented communications to machine-oriented expectation for varying degrees of distortion tolerance.
communications.
Further research and standardization efforts on networking
A large spectrum of applications is expected to be deployed technologies are required, driven by the vision of utilizing
in future industrial networks [1]: networking technologies in the many facets of future
industries and society enabled by digital transformation. The

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