Network Slicing for Industry 4.0
Author
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2017
Submitted on
2017-06-08
Pages
76
Abstract
Industry 4.0 introduces modern communication and information technologies to industrial manufacturing systems, and it is expected that applications will have end-to-end network requirements ranging from extremely low latency to high throughput. This thesis investigates network slicing as a technology facilitating the heterogeneous application requirements. We study methods for analyzing end-to-end characteristics in industrial networks, and propose schemes for slicing industrial communication technologies which provide different characteristics in terms of utilization, reliability and isolation. Furthermore, we define an abstract representation of industrial networks which decouples the management of industrial communication technologies from the construction network slices. Finally, we propose a method for constructing network slices from application requirements, which demonstrates how end-to-end analysis can be integrated into an algorithm. While there is still much work to be done before network slicing can be introduced in industrial networks, the work presented in this thesis provides insight into the challenges and possibilities involved in slicing industrial communication networks.
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