Industrial Transition: Achieving Trusted Industrial Automation

Advances in new technologies and expectations for more efficient production processes and manufacturing plants are driving unprecedented changes in industrial facilities. These changes have increased the level of automation, accuracy, and amount of data available.

These advances have made Industry 4.0 a reality, giving manufacturers greater growth prospects and business opportunities, while reducing emissions while enhancing their competitive advantage in the global economic environment by increasing productivity, safety and reliability. It is estimated that the next 10 years will bring automation equipment manufacturers a business opportunity worth about 6.5 trillion US dollars.

Although this business opportunity is very attractive, there are still many major obstacles to overcome. For example, in traditionally conservative industries, the adoption of new technologies is generally slow. Automated factories are currently a mixture of old and new systems, and the corresponding inter-system communication is more complicated. There is basically no way for existing infrastructure to securely capture and transmit data at the edge of the network. In short, manufacturing plants and processing plants do not change overnight. This requires a transition period.

To achieve and accelerate this transition, automation vendors are beginning to seek more system domain expertise and solutions from technology partners and suppliers such as ADI.

The transitions required for networked businesses, especially Ethernet and security
Industrial Ethernet has been widely used in control applications and will continue to expand as the preferred communication medium as companies and markets transition to Industry 4.0.

One of the challenges is to solve the deterministic problem of Ethernet. Many protocols use a proprietary Layer 2 solution. However, these protocols can lead to a large number of interoperability issues when attempting to extract relevant data for use at a higher level of the enterprise network or between different manufacturing nodes. The new IEEE 802.1 TSN standard is designed to address the same kind of problems encountered in industrial control and promises to support the transition from proprietary solutions to standards-based approaches.

Ethernet is traditionally a "best effort" network. In order to deploy Ethernet to mission-critical applications, special features need to be added, including time synchronization, traffic scheduling, flow control, and seamless redundancy. The goal behind these emerging IEEE TSN standards is to achieve a truly converged network that enables seamless coexistence of all types of traffic across the network. This will enable mission-critical real-time traffic to be transmitted on the same network as streaming and “best effort” traffic. These features enable network designers to ensure that specific categories of traffic are delivered in a timely manner throughout the network topology. Unlike proprietary Layer 2 solutions, these features are designed to scale to gigabit or higher line rates.

Analog Devices recently acquired Innovasic, a major member and contributor to the Industrial Internet Alliance, to help TSN.

Connecting edge devices to the TSN-supported Converged Trusted Industry 4.0 networked enterprise network presents many challenges. Communication technologies in current edge devices, such as fieldbus and 4 mA to 20 mA current loops, work properly and reliably. However, when transferring their data to the cloud (local or remote), the path from the factory building to the front office is often hampered by multi-layer communication. Gateways are often required to convert one format or protocol to another, and the data may be stored on multiple servers on the way to the actual analysis. The total cost of ownership of moving data from simple sensors to the cloud involves not only the equipment needed for data delivery, but also the software, processing technology, and manpower needed to ensure data integrity throughout the process.

Although connecting a Ethernet to a simple device such as a temperature transmitter may seem a bit contradictory, it is independent of whether the device is simple or not, or which produces/consumes relatively little data. This relates to how you can effectively extract data from devices on a converged network and then apply that data to executable results. For example, a distributed control system (DCS) may use data from a temperature sensor to ensure that some of its processes run in real time. However, this particular temperature may also affect the entire process. By seamlessly connecting the temperature transmitter to the cloud, all process parameters can be considered in near real-time to perform the analysis to ensure the entire process runs. Adjustments can be made to optimize production or improve energy efficiency.

ADI sees these challenges as the key to customer success, and it is also a driving force for us to invest in cutting-edge technology and push Ethernet to the edge. The key technology we call low-complexity Ethernet is a drive technology that connects simple industrial devices such as temperature transmitters directly to Ethernet.

Low-complexity Ethernet addresses the traditional size, power, and cost issues of today's standard Layer 2 Ethernet implementations, reducing the total cost of ownership for transferring data to the cloud.

The transition to a converged industrial Ethernet network also requires innovation at the physical layer to provide a solution that matches some of the inherent capabilities of existing systems. Many widely deployed Ethernet physical layer standards limit cable length to 100 meters and require multiple twisted pair cables for implementation. In contrast, most of the existing infrastructure installations for factory automation networks are built using single twisted pair cabling that supports data rates up to 1000 meters at 31.25 kbps. To address this issue, ADI is collaborating with major industry partners sponsored by IEEE to develop new Ethernet standards. The standard, called 10SPE, will run on a single twisted pair cable with a support distance of up to 1000 meters and a data rate of 10 Mbps. ADI uses a standards-based, collaborative approach to solve this problem, helping to reduce application barriers and reduce time to achieve a consolidated network goal across the entire plant.

In addition to developing new features that support Ethernet convergence, other applications that already use 100 Mbps deterministic Ethernet are looking to break bandwidth and performance limits. Applications like robots require more and more axes that are more precise than in the past. The transition of the control network to the Gigabit network speed helps meet these requirements, which represents another major trend in the industrial Ethernet market.

The rapid success of Ethernet often makes Ethernet users struggle to solve security problems associated with their applications. Expected growth in data and inspection requirements at the edge of the industrial network may be hampered by security risks. In addition, the requirements for low latency and jitter performance in industrial control applications may directly conflict with security requirements. Users of these technologies must address performance and security issues in these applications as quickly as possible.

Analog Devices recently acquired Sypris Electronics' Security Business Unit (SCIOMetrics)
Cybersecurity risks in the industrial sector are increasingly being valued. Due to the rise of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), industrial space is defined as a wide range of distributed devices, dynamic information flows, and cross-environment interconnections to provide new capabilities. However, it is not surprising that with the creation of new features, it has brought unprecedented new security threats and is more realistic than ever.

If you imagine the number of devices that must be securely connected to the network, you will understand how difficult it is to establish identity for these devices. Physical distributed shared encryption keys quickly become impractical, and certificate exchange management translates into a logistics nightmare. To achieve the vision of a trusted Industry 4.0 enterprise, keyless identity is critical. Also, lightweight encryption techniques with low fixed latency and miniaturized hardware and/or software footprint are needed to securely connect devices that are highly constrained at the edge of the network. ADI has invested heavily in technologies such as resource-constrained device authentication and security solutions and lightweight block encryption to address these important issues.

In conclusion
ADI's Industrial Automation business unit is dedicated to providing leading-edge solutions for edge detection, control, monitoring and robust real-time communication systems in industrial networks. Analog Devices has developed and accumulated expertise in a variety of areas, including security and certification, functional and intrinsic security, and multi-protocol support. We will work together to accelerate and accelerate the transition from sensor to cloud to trusted industrial IoT networking companies.