A model-based approach for design and verification of Industrial Internet of Things

Abstract

This investigation presents an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) architecture and a Model-Based Engineering (MBE) approach for design, verification, and auto-code generation of control applications in process industries. The IIoT architecture describes the hardware components, communication modules, and software. It emerges as a major enabler for providing open connectivity to process industry which provides greater data-aggregation, visibility, availability, flexible control, and cloud-connectivity. The MBE approach is based on multiple views of the systems with each domain model describing a particular view. The multi-view modelling approach is used to perform design and verification of the IIoT enabled control in process industries. We show that such an integration of MBE, cloud-computing, and IIoT provides certain desirable features such as plug-and-play control and on-the fly verification which are lacking in the process industry. The proposed MBE approach and IIoT architecture are illustrated on the quadruple tank process, a benchmark problem in control. Our deployment results verify the benefits envisaged by IIoT, cloud, and MBE integration.