Cenk Gündoğan: Industrial Internet of Things

Mission-critical systems in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) demand secure communication by transport streams that are resilient to intermittent connectivity and network disruptions. However, deployed networks in this area typically consist of resource constrained embedded devices and low-power and lossy networks (LLNs). Solutions that build on the well-known host-centric approach (IP) are usually resource-intensive and introduce complexity that is not easyly stemmed by targeted IIoT devices.

A consensus appears to emerge from various IETF working groups in favor of the IoT-tailored 6LoWPAN/IPv6/RPL/CoAP stack, which transparently brings the IPv6 protocol suite into constrained networks. In contrast, information-centric networks (ICN) replace the narrow waist of the Internet hourglass architecture, thereby employing a receiver-driven, cache-aware and stateful forwarding plane with data replication mechanisms. These extended network layer functionalities potentially provide benefits in reducing upper protocol complexity while increasing network resilience in the resource constrained IIoT of large-scale.

This talk discusses requirements and research challenges in the routing area of IIoT networks, focusing on   real-world scenarios of the industrial partner in our project I3. These scenarios include the periodic retrieval of mission-critical sensor readings from confined spaces, and a timely propagation of alarm notifications in safety-critical systems. Initial work will be presented that steers towards a self-maintained, scalable publish/subscribe system that utilizes in-network caching, data replication mechanisms and name-based routing for improving network resilience.

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