IIC Journal of Innovation | Page 86

A PoV on the IIC Industrial Internet Reference Architecture Security and Privacy and Performance and Scalability. These perspectives correspond to the General System Characteristics of the IIRA. 4.4 The EPCGlobal Architecture Framework The EPCGlobal Architecture Framework (EAF), developed by a consortium of end users, technology companies and universities and led by GS1 Global, consists of a family of architecture standards related to the interoperability of IT systems used in RFID-based global supply chains (Felice Armenio, 2007). RFID-based supply chains can be considered as an example of an IIS. This framework, specifically designed for this domain, is neither a generic IIS Reference Architecture in the true sense nor an instantiated architecture of an actual system. It can be considered a combination of a reference architecture and standards family for a very specific domain. The major focus of the EPCGlobal standards is interoperability and integration across multiple supply chain participants. Providing unique identities to supply chain assets, decentralized infrastructure for data processing and creating layered data exchange standards fall within the scope of the EAF. As a reference architecture, its focus is limited to the Implementation Viewpoint. The EAF consists of three major categories of standards:  Object Exchange – consisting of ways of providing unique identities (Electronic Product Codes or EPC), encoding the same in RFID chips and the air interface radio and data link specifications  Infrastructure Standards – consisting of RFID tag-to-reader interface specifications, management of RFID readers, edge processing of RFID events, interface standards for capture and storage of RFID events  Data Exchange Standards – consisting of data query interface standards, discovery of services and naming services for resolving EPC to information service endpoints The most important point to note is that, unlike the IIRA and the IoT-A ARM, the EAF is an established standard and compliance with these standard can be tested and certified. 4.5 Other Standards and Guidelines Related to IIS Architectures Several organization have published or are in the process of publishing technical specifications and guidelines for designers and architects of IIS. A detailed discussion of these specification and guidelines is beyond the scope of this article. We list the following as examples of important work done in the area of architecture, design and operations guidelines ETSI M2M Communication Functional Architecture Technical Specification – This is a technical specification with normative references to several communication and network protocol IIC Journal of Innovation - 85 -