Smart Sensor: SoC Architecture for the Industrial Internet of Things

Nowadays, the concept of intelligent manufacturing is being introduced, based on the integration of new advanced technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), distributed control, data analysis, and cyber-security in the manufacturing area, with the aim of improving manufacturing processes and the articles produced. In this sense, new intelligent devices (Smart Sensors) should be developed that integrate several detection methods (sensors), real-time (RT) data analysis, and wired and/ or wireless connectivity. The main contribution of this paper is the design, implementation, and experimental verification of an architecture of a Smart Sensor that satisfies the operational requirements needed by the Industrial IoT (IIoT). Considering the software and hardware adaptability that a Smart Sensor should have, this paper takes advantage of the characteristics of the current field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and SoC to implement a Smart Sensor for the IIoT. In this sense, the proposed Smart Sensor architecture incorporates RT operation features, the ability to perform local data analysis, high availability communication interfaces, such as high-availability seamless redundancy (HSR) and parallel redundancy protocol (PRP), interoperability (industrial protocols), and cyber-security. The architecture was implemented with hardware available in the market, IP cores, and Python libraries developed by third parties. Finally, to validate the applicability of the architecture in the industry, two test environments were implemented. In the first case, interoperability, high availability, synchronization, and local data processing are validated. The second case aims to determine the delay when adding encryption (cyber-security) in layer 2 communications.