Open Source Fog Architecture for Industrial IoT Automation Based on Industrial Protocols

The undergoing fourth industrial revolution is constantly putting an accent on the integration of all entities within a single computational system, by moving from a centralized cloud architecture to edge computation. The decentralization of computational power needs a fog architecture, since it's becoming essential to reduce the latency required to take decisions in the industrial environment, in a way that does not violate timing constraints. This work describes the development and the deployment of an industrial fog architecture based on open source tools for Industry 4.0, called IFog4.0. The proposed architecture is able to exchange data using industrial networks and communication protocols, such as Profinet and Modbus TCP, and it is mainly intended to be deployed to Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). Automation is provided by the proposed programming Integrated Development Environment (IDE), while platform management is implemented by the Fog-Management tool. Furthermore, IFog4.0 embeds other open source tools such as Docker and Grafana, to perform data visualization and transmission. Verification is carried out by deploying the platform to an emulated industrial environment. A gas regulation station has been selected as the main usecase.