Accountable and Distributed Industrial Control Systems with Autonomous Contracts : OCN-DLT: Industry Operations and Control Networks with Distributed Ledger Technology

Abstract

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) have specific data requirements in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). Lost or delayed critical data, such as control signals, can damage widespread production, such as machine performance. The problem is compounded in the next-generation Industry 4.0, where the operations will be even less human-dependent, involving multiple organizations. Moreover, the communication aspects across multistakeholders require a disaggregated approach contrary to the current closed ICS architecture.This paper presents a framework for decentralization of ICS called Operations and Control Networks (OCN) in which ‘contracts’ are the basic units of abstraction to exchange information with trust and precision between different actors. In the lower layers, High-Precision Communication (HPC) contracts execute control functions with requested service level guarantees in the network. A high-level trusted delegation of tasks is executed as smart contracts using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to enable multi-stakeholder auditability and accountability.