Real-Time Performance of Industrial IoT Communication Technologies: A Review

With the growing need for automation and the ongoing merge of OT and IT,\nindustrial networks have to transport a high amount of heterogeneous data with\nmixed criticality such as control traffic, sensor data, and configuration\nmessages. Current advances in IT technologies furthermore enable a new set of\nautomation scenarios under the roof of Industry 4.0 and IIoT where industrial\nnetworks now have to meet new requirements in flexibility and reliability. The\nnecessary real-time guarantees will place significant demands on the networks.\nIn this paper, we identify IIoT use cases and infer real-time requirements\nalong several axes before bridging the gap between real-time network\ntechnologies and the identified scenarios. We review real-time networking\ntechnologies and present peer-reviewed works from the past 5 years for\nindustrial environments. We investigate how these can be applied to\ncontrollers, systems, and embedded devices. Finally, we discuss open challenges\nfor real-time communication technologies to enable the identified scenarios.\nThe review shows academic interest in the field of real-time communication\ntechnologies but also highlights a lack of a fixed set of standards important\nfor trust in safety and reliability, especially where wireless technologies are\nconcerned.\n