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.