Edge Computing Architectures in Industry 4.0: A General Survey and Comparison

Abstract

Edge Computing represents the computing and networking tasks that IoT (Internet of Things) devices perform at the Edge of the network in communication with the remote Cloud. In this sense, recent researches try to demonstrate that Edge Computing architectures represent optimal solutions in order to minimize latency, improve privacy and reduce bandwidth and related costs in IoT-based scenarios, such as Smart Cities, Smart Energy, Smart Farming or Industry 4.0. This work is a review of the main existing Edge Computing reference architectures aimed at Industry 4.0 proposed by the Edge Computing Consortium, the FAR-Edge Project and the Industrial Internet Consortium for Industry 4.0. This paper includes a comparison among these reference architectures, as well as their most important features in order to build a new Edge Computing Reference Architecture as future work.