Discrete Event Modeling and Simulation Approaches for IIoT

The industry has experienced significant advancements in recent years, primarily focusing on smart manufacturing, culminating in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) revolution I4.0 emphasizes interconnectivity, real time data capture and transmission among machines, autonomy, and machine learning, providing manufacturing companies numerous growth opportunities. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a core component of this revolution, becoming integral to each system and increasing complexity due to the vast number of interconnected devices and diverse physical components. The variety of virtual services distributed across the architectural layers of industrial systems (cloud, fog, edge) and the various connection types between IIoT devices introduce security and privacy challenges, which are critical issues for any system incorporating IIoT. To fully leverage IIoT’s potential, addressing these security and privacy concerns is essential. Research and design in this domain are challenging, particularly when creating a simulation environment to study a system’s behavior over time. Despite the extensive research in IoT and the significant benefits of simulation based approaches, there remains a challenge in creating detailed representations from the underlying IoT nodes to the application layer in the cloud, along with the underlying networking infrastructure. To assist researchers and practitioners in overcoming these challenges, we propose the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism. DEVS provides a mathematical framework for modeling systems, whether discrete or continuous events, allowing for the simulation of these systems within the DEVS environment. Every system, whether real or conceptual, has a time base, inputs, outputs, and functions to determine the next state, as well as outputs that reflect the current state and inputs. Simulating the system within the DEVS environment allows one to study its behavior to predict and optimize performance patterns.