A Real-Time Software Defined Networking Framework for Next-Generation Industrial Networks

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2019

Authors

Moutinho, L (Author) Other; Pedreiras, P (Author) Other; Luis Almeida (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: IEEE Access

Vol. 7

ISSN: 2169-3536

Publisher: IEEE

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 0 Citations

Scopus - 3 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00R-EHC

DOI: 10.1109/access.2019.2952242

Abstract (EN): Industry 4.0 brings in a whole set of new requirements to engineering industrial systems, with notorious impact at the networking layer. A key challenge posed by Industry 4.0 is the operational flexibility needed to support on-the-fly reconfiguration of production cells, stations, and machines. At the networking layer, this flexibility implies dynamic packet handling, scheduling, and dispatching. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides this level of flexibility in the general Local Area Network (LAN) domain. However, its application in the industry has been hindered by a lack of support for real-time services. This paper addresses this limitation, proposing an extended SDN OpenFlow framework that includes real-time services, leveraging existing real-time data plane Ethernet technologies. We show the OpenFlow enhancements, a real-time SDN controller, and experimental validation and performance assessment. Using a proof-of-concept prototype with 3 switches and cycles of 250 mu s, we could achieve 1 mu s jitter on time-triggered traffic and a reconfiguration time between operational modes below 10ms.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 12