Development of Industry 4.0 predictive maintenance architecture for broadcasting chain

Industry 4.0 Predictive Maintenance (PdM 4.0) architecture in the broadcasting chain is one of the taxonomy challenges for deploying Industry 4.0 frameworks. This paper proposes a novel PdM framework based on advanced Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) to reduce operation and maintenance costs. This framework includes real-time production monitoring, business processes, and integration based on Design Science Research (DSR) to generate an innovative Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) meta-model. The addressed model visualizes sub-processes based on experts' and stakeholders' knowledge to reduce the cost of maintenance of audiovisual services including satellite TV, cable TV, and live audio and video broadcast services. Based on the recommendation and the concept of Industry 4.0, the proposed framework tolerates the predictable failures and further concerns in similar related industries. Some empirical experiments have been conducted by using the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s (IRIB) high-power station (located near the capital city of Iran, Tehran) to evaluate the functionality and efficiency of the proposed predictive maintenance framework. Practical outcomes demonstrate that interval times between data collection should be increased in audio and video broadcasting predictive maintenance because of the limitation of the internal processing performance of equipment. The framework also indicates the role of the Frequency Modulation (FM) transmitters’ data clearance to reduce the instability and untrustworthy data during data mining. The proposed DSR method endorses using a customized RAMI 4.0 meta-model framework to adapt distributed broadcasting and communication with PdM 4.0, which increases the stability as well as decreasing maintenance costs of the broadcasting chain in comparison to state-of-the-art methodologies. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed framework outperforms the best-evaluated methods in terms of acceptance.     

图形化在线建模的OPC UA网关设计

OPC统一架构(Unified Architecture,UA)已经成为工业4.0的核心通信接口规范,但由于工业领域设备更新缓慢,大量现场设备仍使用传统的通信协议,且设备生产厂家不同,使用的通信协议也可能不同.为了将不同类型的现场设备融入OPC UA架构,克服多种通信协议之间的数据交换壁垒,本文设计了一种支持图形化在线建模的OPC UA网关.网关内部实现了OPC UA服务器,能够将多种通信协议数据连接到OPC UA服务器地址空间的节点上,方便MES和ERP等管理软件进行高效数据访问.同时,为了便于使用者建立OPC UA信息模型以及配置网关数据采集逻辑,设计了一种图形化建模方法.最后,本文通过示例,验证了图形化在线建模网关的可用性.     

Transdisciplinary systems approach to realization of digital transformation

With advancement in technology and emergence of fast networks, operation of businesses and global companies increasingly depend on the Internet and digital transformation of their infrastructures. Adaptation to Industry 4.0 paradigm gives rise to societal, technological and communication issues due to challenges in product, services, social and inter-disciplinary interactions. A more fundamental approach that can mitigate complexity of the new business is necessary. This paper adopts a system of systems model embedded into a transdisciplinary system design to describe a typical X4.0 system where X can be any industry sector migrating to Industry 4.0 paradigm. Two industry sectors: Education 4.0 and Retail 4.0 are studied under the amalgamated transdisciplinary system of systems model. Results show that the four artifacts in X4.0 can form the foundation of new sectorial 4.0 development with focus on specific elements in Cyber Physical Systems and Work4.0 artifacts. The transdisciplinary system approach has the advantage of a self-improving model that drives realization of digital transformation in evolutionary cycles.     

一种SWJS云平台研究与应用

根据SOA架构理念,以JSB、WCF、SDO等技术为基础,进行了面向服务的云平台的架构,建成由云端用户请求层、云服务代理中心（JSB层）、云服务资源层、数据服务层、数据与系统资源层组成的SWJS云平台,JSB、WCF、SDO等技术在服务封装、数据服务与调度、跨平台通信等方面显示了协同性和快速性,经过教师工作绩效评定系统平台的实例演示,SWJS云平台具有较强的稳定性、快速响应性和服务能力。     

A cloud middleware for assuring performance and high availability of soft real-time applications

Applications are increasingly being deployed in the cloud due to benefits stemming from economy of scale, scalability, flexibility and utility-based pricing model. Although most cloud-based applications have hitherto been enterprise-style, there is an emerging need for hosting real-time streaming applications in the cloud that demand both high availability and low latency. Contemporary cloud computing research has seldom focused on solutions that provide both high availability and real-time assurance to these applications in a way that also optimizes resource consumption in data centers, which is a key consideration for cloud providers. This paper makes three contributions to address this dual challenge. First, it describes an architecture for a fault-tolerant framework that can be used to automatically deploy replicas of virtual machines in data centers in a way that optimizes resources while assuring availability and responsiveness. Second, it describes the design of a pluggable framework within the fault-tolerant architecture that enables plugging in different placement algorithms for VM replica deployment. Third, it illustrates the design of a framework for real-time dissemination of resource utilization information using a real-time publish/subscribe framework, which is required by the replica selection and placement framework. Experimental results using a case study that involves a specific replica placement algorithm are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of our architecture.     

Factory Communications at the Dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) and its requirements impose radical changes to the underlying networking technologies that will be adopted in future factories. Most popular solutions in use today, in fact, are suitable for Industry 4.0 only in part, and new techniques and devices have to be developed to cope with demanding needs in terms of flexibility, communication bandwidth, real-time behavior, mobility, scalability, energy efficiency, reliability, availability and security. The goal of this paper is assessing the current situation of factory communication systems in the light of their evolution to support Industry 4.0 applications. The paper provides an overview of fundamental concepts in factory communication systems focusing, in particular, on prevalent wireless and wirebound communication protocols and standards. Research challenges in next generation industrial networks are also taken into account.     

Hybrid Cloud Architecture for Higher Education System

As technology improves, several modernization efforts are taken in the process of teaching and learning. An effective education system should maintain global connectivity, federate security and deliver self-access to its services. The cloud computing services transform the current education system to an advanced one. There exist several tools and services to make teaching and learning more interesting. In the higher education system, the data flow and basic operations are almost the same. These systems need to access cloud-based applications and services for their operational advancement and flexibility. Architecting a suitable cloud-based education system will leverage all the benefits of the cloud to its stakeholders. At the same time, educational institutions want to keep their sensitive information more secure. For that, they need to maintain their on-premises data center along with the cloud infrastructure. This paper proposes an advanced, flexible and secure hybrid cloud architecture to satisfy the growing demands of an education system. By sharing the proposed cloud infrastructure among several higher educational institutions, there is a possibility to implement a common education system among organizations. Moreover, this research demonstrates how a cloud-based education architecture can utilize the advantages of the cloud resources offered by several providers in a hybrid cloud environment. In addition, a reference architecture using Amazon Web Service (AWS) is proposed to implement a common university education system.     

基于动态云的智慧农业架构研究

云计算是所有数据汇集到云中心进行统一处理,用户不再需要部署计算能力很强的客户端,而是直接从“云冶里（服务器端）获得计算能力。流行的云计算架构采用强数据中心（服务端）、弱客户端模式。而建设云计算中心的强服务端,需要硬件高配置,需要良好的网络环境,造成建设云中心资金投入过大。对于智慧农业云架构,亦是如此。目前智慧农业的各网络客户端硬件配置优良。文中提出基于动态云的智慧农业架构,该架构通过将具有一定存储能力、数据处理能力、能够提供一定网络服务能力的客户端,根据需要,结合到云数据中心,使该中心的规模动态地扩大或者缩小。实际上,就是让某客户端为云服务中的其他客户端提供服务,减轻实际云数据中心的数据存储、数据处理、资源配置等压力。基于该动态云的智慧农业架构部分已经实现,并且在南京和安徽地区的部分农产品的各环节中得到稳定应用,证明了该架构的实用性。     

云计算环境中SaaS的接入控制和调度策略研究

SaaS是一种基于网络的软件应用模式,是服务提供商将应用软件统一部署在自己的服务器上,用户根据自己的实际需要,通过互联网向服务提供商订购并支付自己所需的服务。在未来,SaaS模式是占主导地位的云服务模型。文中阐述SaaS的基本概念,介绍了SaaS的参考结构以及服务流程,分析概括了不同类型的服务要求的接人控制策略,总结了不同性能要求作业的调度策略,最后结合已有的云计算环境下的SaaS接入控制和调度策略研究成果,展望了未来的研究方向和亟待解决的关键问题。     

数据处理中心云服务综合架构的研究与应用

分析云计算研究和应用的现状,阐述了综合型项目中基于云服务架构建设数据处理中心的典型模式,采用了理论分析和实践设计的方法,重点研究并提出了数据处理中心的云服务综合架构,包括云计算平台、资源管理、架构管理、计算资源部署和云存储数据仓库,在建设成本、移植风险和业务性能方面分析了云架构的基础优势,并展望了云架构发展前景。     

Evaluation of messaging middleware for high-performance cloud computing

Cloud computing is posing several challenges, such as security, fault tolerance, access interface singularity, and network constraints, both in terms of latency and bandwidth. In this scenario, the performance of communications depends both on the network fabric and its efficient support in virtualized environments, which ultimately determines the overall system performance. To solve the current network constraints in cloud services, their providers are deploying high-speed networks, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet. This paper presents an evaluation of high-performance computing message-passing middleware on a cloud computing infrastructure, Amazon EC2 cluster compute instances, equipped with 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The analysis of the experimental results, confronted with a similar testbed, has shown the significant impact that virtualized environments still have on communication performance, which demands more efficient communication middleware support to get over the current cloud network limitations.     

CitiTime: a system for rapid creation of portable next-generation telephony services

We present the architecture, design and experimental research prototype implementation of CitiTime, an open system architecture for the rapid development of advanced next-generation telephony services that overcomes some of the limitations of the current closed PSTN architecture and service model. CitiTime allows communication sessions to be set up over the PSTN, the Internet, or a combination of both. Services can be provided by multiple cooperating distributed service providers, some of whom may use third-party software components which can be “plugged in” or even dynamically downloaded from the network as needed. This allows advanced services to be deployed and delivered to users rapidly, a crucial requirement in the increasingly competitive telecommunications services marketplace. CitiTime is built upon an object-oriented call model called Citi Call Control (CCC) which we have defined as a small set of extensions to the standard Java Telephony API (JTAPI) call model. JTAPI is designed primarily for centralized, single provider, call center type applications. Our extensions provide support for multiple, distributed providers as well as advanced services. CCC hides details of underlying call-state management, protocols and hardware from applications. The CitiTime prototype software is currently operational in our laboratory. We briefly describe its current implementation as well as future work to address issues such as fault tolerance.     

A model-based strategy for quantifying the impact of availability on the energy flow of data centers

The demand for higher computing power increases and, as a result, also leads to an increased demand for services hosted in cloud computing environments. It is known, for example, that in 2018 more than 4 billion people made daily access to these services through the Internet, corresponding to more than half of the world’s population. To support such services, these clouds are made available by large data centers. These systems are responsible for the increasing consumption of electricity, given the increasing number of accesses, increasing the demand for greater communication capacity, processing and high availability. Since electricity is not always obtained from renewable resources, the relentless pursuit of cloud services can have a significant environmental impact. In this context, this paper proposes an integrated and dynamic strategy that demonstrates the impact of the availability of data center architecture equipment on energy consumption. For this, we used the technique of modeling colored Petri nets (CPN), responsible for quantifying the cost, environmental impact and availability of the electricity infrastructure of the data centers under analysis. Such proposed models are supported by the developed tool, where data center designers do not need to know CPN to compute the metrics of interest. A case study was proposed to show the applicability of the proposed strategy. Significant results were obtained, showing an increase in system availability of 100%, with equivalents operating cost and environmental impact.

     

Highly reliable architecture using the 80/20 rule in cloud computing datacenters

Cloud datacenters host hundreds of thousands of physical servers that offer computing resources for executing customer jobs. While the failures of these physical machines are considered normal rather than exceptional, in large-scale distributed systems and cloud datacenters evaluation of availability in a datacenter is essential for both cloud providers and customers. Although providing a highly available and reliable computing infrastructure is essential to maintaining customer confidence, cloud providers desire to have highly utilized datacenters to increase the profit level of delivered services. Cloud computing architectural solutions should thus take into consideration both high availability for customers and highly utilized resources to make delivering services more profitable for cloud providers. This paper presents a highly reliable cloud architecture by leveraging the 80/20 rule. This architecture uses the 80/20 rule (80% of cluster failures come from 20% of physical machines) to identify failure-prone physical machines by dividing each cluster into reliable and risky sub-clusters. Furthermore, customer jobs are divided into latency-sensitive and latency-insensitive types. The results showed that only about 1% of all requested jobs are extreme latency-sensitive and require availability of 99.999%. By offering services to revenue-generating jobs, which are less than 50% of all requested jobs, within the reliable subcluster of physical machines, cloud providers can make their businesses more profitable by preventing service level agreement violation penalties and improving their reputations.     

支持中国墙策略的云组合服务信息流控制模型

由于所属服务提供商在商业上的竞争关系,云组合服务的组件服务之间可能存在利益冲突,必须对云组合服务的信息流进行控制以避免敏感信息在冲突组件服务间流动。针对云组合服务中的利益冲突问题,在构建云组合服务加权有向图模型的基础上,形式地描述了复杂组合结构下的信息流,定义了云服务的联盟关系与数据的依赖关系的概念,并将中国墙策略中的冲突关系扩展为组合冲突关系。在此基础上,提出了一种支持中国墙策略的云组合服务信息流控制模型（CW-CCSIFC）,给出了模型的形式化描述及相关定理的证明。分析表明,CW-CCSIFC模型可以防止有利益冲突的云服务间的非法信息流动,保护云组合服务的信息流安全。     

IoT-enabled smart appliances under industry 4.0: A case study

Manufacturers expect the extra value of Industry 4.0 as the world is experiencing digital transformation. Studies have proved the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for reducing cost, improving efficiency, quality, and achieving data-oriented predictive maintenance services. Collecting a wide range of real-time data from products and the environment requires smart sensors, reliable communications, and seamless integration. IoT, as a critical Industry 4.0 enabler emerges smart home appliances for higher customer satisfaction, energy efficiency, personalisation, and advanced Big data analytics. However, established factories with limited resources are facing challenges to change the longstanding production lines and meet customer’s requirements. This study aims to fulfil the gaps by transforming conventional home appliances to IoT-enabled smart systems with the ability to integrate into a smart home system. An industry-led case study demonstrates how to turn conventional appliances to smart products and systems (SPS) by utilising the state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 technologies.     

工业互联网云网关架构及实现

针对工业生产数据通信协议复杂、工业设备与云端通信困难的问题,提出一种工业互联网云网关架构。针对传输协议复杂多样的问题,提出了一种多协议数据解析方法,能够对多种协议下的数据进行解析,并转换为MQTT协议,实现数据统一协议并上传至云平台。针对协议转换中的实时可靠性问题,提出一种支持断点续传并可以快速处理并发任务的异步处理机制来保证协议转换的实时可靠性。在保证实时可靠的基础上,提出一种三层加密方式以提高数据传输的安全性。在软硬件上实现了上述云网关架构,并在工业过程控制设备上进行了实验。实验结果表明,该架构能够有效解决工业系统与云平台的数据融合问题。     

Towards an accurate evaluation of quality of cloud service in service-oriented cloud computing

Cloud computing promises to provide high quality, on-demand services with service-oriented architecture. However, cloud service typically come with various levels of services and performance characteristics, which makes Quality of Cloud Service (QoCS) high variance. Hence, it is difficult for the users to evaluate these cloud services and select them to fit their QoCS requirements. In this paper, we propose an accurate evaluation approach of QoCS in service-oriented cloud computing. We first employ fuzzy synthetic decision to evaluate cloud service providers according to cloud users’ preferences and then adopt cloud model to computing the uncertainty of cloud services based on monitored QoCS data. Finally, we obtain the evaluation results of QoCS using fuzzy logic control. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed approach can perform an accurate evaluation of QoCS in service-oriented cloud computing.     

A Quality 4.0 Model for architecting industry 4.0 systems

The increasing importance of automation and smart capabilities for factories and other industrial systems has led to the concept of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). This concept aims at creating systems that improve the vertical and horizontal integration of production through (i) comprehensive and intelligent automation of industrial processes, (ii) informed and decentralized real-time decision making, and (iii) stringent quality requirements that can be monitored at any time. The I4.0 infrastructure, supported in many cases by robots, sensors, and algorithms, demands highly skilled workers able to continuously monitor the quality of both the items to be produced and the underlying production processes.While the first attempts to develop smart factories and enhance the digital transformation of companies are under way, we need adequate methods to support the identification and specification of quality attributes that are relevant to I4.0 systems. Our main contribution is to provide a refined version of the ISO 25010 quality model specifically tailored to those qualities demanded by I4.0 needs. This model aims to provide actionable support for I4.0 software engineers that are concerned with quality issues. We developed our model based on an exhaustive analysis of similar proposals using the design science method as well as expertise from seasoned engineers in the domain. We further evaluate our model by applying it to two important I4.0 reference architectures further clarifying its application.