KOSINU5

General Information

Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing the way companies manufacture, improve and operate their products. Production chains are planned more flexibly, robots are used and machines are networked. These have to communicate with each other.

Project Goal

The aim of this project is to develop robust, scalable industrial networks for the intelligent factory and to evaluate their performance. Real-time requirements are placed on the industrial network and guarantees are required for the communication networks of the factory of the future.

A particular focus is on the influence of 5G and the air interface with regard to real-time guarantees and the stochastic scalability of 5G for industrial networks. Today’s separate subnets for Industry 4.0 applications are being converted into a convergent network infrastructure consisting of heterogeneous, deterministic subnets. These are used jointly by many time-critical (e.g. control, real-time image processing) and non-time-critical applications (e.g. configuration, monitoring) so that the network infrastructure in factories ensures IT / OT convergence. For this purpose, network monitoring mechanisms for selected industrial applications (with regard to performance and resilience for diagnosis or as an early warning system) are to be developed and implemented in the project.

Furthermore, interfaces, in particular application-neutral interfaces to the network with the support of various network technologies (5G, WLAN, TSN) and mechanisms for automatic regulation and control of the networks are to be provided. This plug-and-play approach for industrial networks is demonstrated in a proof-of-concept.

Infosim^® – Our Focus

Infosims focus in the project is on developing uniform interfaces for a converged network management of the heterogenious device landscape. Among others this includes a multi-stage early warning system for diagnosis and problem detection as well as active probing and network planning, taking into account resilience. This offers possibilities to provide information about the status and condition of each device and automatic reconfiguration of the network.

Our Partners: