Industrial internet of things software architecture for maritime industries

The economic impact of the latest emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) becoming very important in industrial automation to get competitive advantages. It also focuses on safety-critical industrial applications besides effective process management. It brings innovation in the way industrial processes are executed, controlled, and monitored. A briefly review of the opportunities and challenges of big data and IIoT in maritime industries are presented in this article. Authors have found that the adaptation of big data analytics in IIoT architecture increases companies’ productivity. This article proposes a software architecture for maritime industries based on IIoT with big data analytic facilities. It is a 4-layered architecture that integrates fog and edge computing concepts to get advantages in the data processing of a multi-layered Offshore Support Vessel (OSV). Specialized co-processors are integrated into the architecture to get advantages in real-time processing on a System on Chip (SoC) platform. This software architecture will guide software engineering professionals for requirement analysis, design, development, and maintenance of an IIoT software for maritime industries.