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.