Precise fruits: Hardware supported time-synchronisation on the RaspberryPI

Abstract

The rapid advance of Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) in the Industrial Internet Of Things (IIoT) environment is accelerating the fourth industrial revolution, collectively known as Industry 4.0. With greater numbers of CPSs at the field level, an increasing number of solutions from Information Technology (IT) are finding application in Operation Technology (OT). Technology diffusion is hindered by the strong boundary between IT and OT. Due to the lack of real-time capable communication in IT, this strong boundary is formed. With the extension of standard Ethernet, which dominates the communication in IT, by the missing real-time mechanisms, a convergent network from the field to the cloud is being created. Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) refers to the real-time Ethernet according to IEEE802.1Q. With TSN, the boundary between IT and OT will become much blurrier and applications and products from IT will be able to find their way into OT much more easily. This paper focuses on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products that can be safely deployed in OT environments with appropriate real-time communication. In particular, the critical and essential aspect of time synchronization, which allows secure participation in the OT network in the first place, is examined in more detail. As a IT cross-border enabler platform of IT applications in field of OT, the Raspberry Pi is used with an expansion board for TSN communication.