Industrial Communication Networks and the Future of Industrial Automation

The paper discusses the current trends in communication technologies and their impact on the industrial automation in general and the industry generation 4.0 in particular. It is well known that digital communication networks such as Ethernet, wireless networks, and web technology have made the flow and exchange of information, within distributed automation systems, more reliable, flexible, and comprehensive. In other words, information and communication technology (ICT) provides 1) native support for industrial automation, 2) advantages in control, supervision, and monitoring, and 3) high-performance, greater-controllability, and more flexibility. In this work, we examine Industrial communication topologies, Internet of Things (IoT) enablers that requires low latency. We concluded that wireless gateways will be the new challenging focus regarding latency and security.