Capabilities of 4G SCADA systems in Industry 4.0-scenarios

Abstract:
Industry 4.0 has the objective of creating high flexible and smart industrial plants. Furthermore, factories should be able to produce fully individualized products to customers demands, respectively. To address these requirements, systems needs to be equipped with additional senors and actuators, asa well as a high reliable communication to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. New, so-called “greenfield” deployments will be equipped with all necessary features to fulfill these requirements. Rather, the integration of existing, so-called “brownfield” facilities needs to be solved, because current industrial plants are designed for a life-cycle-time of 20 years and more. Consequently, reconstructions of such brownfield facilities are necessary but should be as simple and cost-efficient as possible. Therefore, the Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA)-protocol may be a suitable solution. To reduce installation backfitting costs, a wireless integration of additional sensors and actuators seems to be a suitable approach. In this paper, we will analyze the capabilities and performance of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system and compare it with a Ethernet and a wireless local area network (WLAN)-based communictaion. Furthermore, we discuss the results, with respect to the applicability in Industry 4.0.