This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2021.3064881, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, SEPTEMBER 2021
Cloud-Edge Computing for Cyber-Physical Systems
and Internet-of-Things
I. I NTRODUCTION
YBER-Physical Systems (CPSs) refer to the closely
C integrated hardware-software systems, coupling the real
physical world with the digitalized virtual world. In a CPS
ecosystem, every physical object (labelled e.g., as an asset or
thing) has one or more cyber representations also recognized
as “digital twins”. Conversely, a digital twin is closely tied
to a physical representation, i.e., an object, an asset, or a
thing, in the physical world. As a matter of fact, these objects
are increasingly interconnected, usually in an asynchronous
fashion, for operations [1]. Lately, Internet technology is
evolving rapidly and empowers a typical class of CPSs, which
is the Internet of Things (IoT). Furthermore, CPSs facilitate
new modalities of interactions between system components
and humans thanks to their advanced computational and com-
munication capabilities [2]. CPSs have produced significant
impacts to industrial settings, where Industrial Cyber-Physical
Systems (ICPSs) emerged [3, 4]. ICPS and Industrial Internet-
of-Things (IIoT) constitute the core of real-world industrial
infrastructures covering various aspects of enterprise systems
such as product, production order, process engineering, supply
chain, etc. The competitiveness of an ICPS mainly comes from
the capability to effectively and efficiently generate, collect,
analyze and use massive digitalized data generated from
various network sources. The close, effective, and information-
driven interactions between ICPS and other enterprise systems
have proven to be vital to modern industries, which constitutes
the core of the 4th Industrial Revolution, also recognized under
the label Industry 4.0 [5, 6].
Industry 4.0 includes CPS as well as IIoT and is applicable
to a wide variety of domains, including “smart factories”,
“smart grid”, “smart cities” etc. It explores the information to
construct a more holistic industrial ecosystem through inter-
connecting, communicating, processing, and using digitalized
data and information. The developments are not only techno-
logical but also of broad organizational significance. A major
and essential requirement from ICPS / IIoT is the necessity
for massive interconnections, and communications [7]. As a
consequence, a key component of modern CPSs, key elements
of Industry 4.0-compliant solutions, is a communication in-
terface that facilitates the networking and, as a consequence,
data and information exchange among the digitalized assets.
Remark: This digitalized data and information can be located
in an embedded manner within the assets using fog and edge
computing principles, or in the cloud [8]. In this sense, as
a promising solution, edge computing refers to the novel
framework where the computation is performed at the edge of
the network of digitalized assets, for improving service latency
and saving communication bandwidth.
1551-3203 (c) 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 22,2021 at 11:53:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1
However, developing reliable and efficient edge-edge, edge-
cloud, and cloud-cloud computing frameworks for ICPS /
IIoT, facilitating horizontal as well as vertical connectivity of
Industry 4.0-compliant solutions, still faces many important
challenges [4]. For example, the communication between CPS
in the edge and between the edge and the cloud may suffer
from unstable network connections and limited bandwidth. In
addition, there are many new security concerns regarding real-
world applications [9].
How to develop and deploy reliable and secure edge com-
puting and cloud computing, as well as how to integrate
them in order to effectively handle these challenges, is largely
unexplored and is also world-wide a current main topic for
research and innovation activities.
This Special Section on “Cloud-Edge Computing for Cyber-
Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things” of the IEEE Trans-
actions on Industrial Informatics (TII) is oriented to the
dissemination of a few of those latest research and innovation
results, covering many aspects of design, optimization, imple-
mentation, and evaluation of emerging cloud-edge solutions
for CPS and IoT applications. The call for papers for this spe-
cial section has received strong responses from the community.
Finally, only seven high-quality papers are eventually accepted
after a rigorous peer-review process. The selected seven high-
quality contributions cover a broad range of novel technologies
and application scenarios in CPS and IoT. We hope that these
accepted papers will produce long-lasting impacts, as well as
stimulating and encouraging the international community to
work on this exciting and impactful topic. The summaries of
these accepted papers are given below.
II. S UMMARIES OF ACCEPTED PAPERS
The paper entitled “Probabilistic solar irradiation forecast-
ing based on variational Bayesian inference with secure feder-
ated learning” by Zhang et al. considers the privacy-preserving
forecasting strategy of solar irradiation with distributed train-
ing data. To address this issue, a federated probabilistic
forecasting scheme is developed based on variational Bayesian
inference and federated learning. During the training process,
computations are performed locally, and the trained models in
IoT devices are aggregated to improve the performance while
respecting data privacy. Numerical experiments are conducted
and the results support the design.
The paper entitled “Optimal control of chilled water system
with ensemble learning and cloud-edge-terminal implementa-
tion” by Deng et al. deals with the optimal control problem of
the chilled water system. Using ensemble learning, a cooling
load prediction scheme is first developed. Then an optimal
control scheme based on the learned model is proposed to re-
duce energy consumption. Practical implementation of the new
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2021.3064881, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, SEPTEMBER 2021 2

method on a cloud-edge-terminal platform is also discussed. the optimal solution are used in this paper. The simulation
Finally, experimental results are presented to demonstrate the results in Mininet show that the strategy achieves its expected
energy efficiency of this new strategy. targets both on utilities and fairness.
The paper entitled “Vehicular computation offloading for
industrial mobile edge computing” by Zhao et al. studies ACKNOWLEDGMENT
the computation offloading problem of industrial vehicles.
To address the limited local computation resource problem, The Guest Editor Team would like to express their gratitude
partial computation tasks of vehicles are assigned to mul- to all the authors who submitted to this special section as
tiple available intelligent devices of industrial mobile edge well as to the anonymous reviewers who participated in
computing. Based on the density of industrial vehicles, a the review process and provided critical and comprehensive
dynamic scheduling strategy is proposed to increase the access review comments, which help select the very high-quality
probability of vehicles by other intelligent devices. Moreover, papers accepted for publication. They would like to extend
a minimum incremental task allocation algorithm is developed their sincere thanks to the Editor-in-Chief of the TII, together
to minimize the system cost. Experiments results are presented with the whole TII staff team, for the support and guidance
to illustrate the system cost reduction. in running this special section.
The paper entitled “FDA3: Federated defense against adver-
sarial attacks for cloud-based IIoT applications” by Song et al. S. HU, Guest Editor
considers various types of attacks of cloud-based IIoT appli- School of Electronics and Computer Science
cations. Based on a modified federated learning framework University of Southampton
and adversarial learning, a novel federated defense approach University Road SO17 1BJ, UK
is proposed. The proposed method helps resist different adver- Email: S.Hu@soton.ac.uk
sarial attacks and also guarantees data privacy among multiple
devices. Finally, experimental results demonstrate the overall Y. SHI, Guest Editor
performance of the proposed defense method. Department of Mechanical Engineering
The paper entitled “Cyber-physical system based heuristic University of Victoria
planning and scheduling method for multiple automatic guided Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada
vehicles in logistics systems” by Lian et al. considers the Email: yshi@uvic.ca
planning and scheduling problems for the CPSs-based multiple
automatic guided vehicles (multi-AGVs) logistics system. To A. COLOMBO, Guest Editor
tackle the problem, a virtual network map with uneven time Institute for Industrial Informatics, Automation and
constraints (UTVNM) is firstly proposed. Then a hierarchical Robotics (I2AR)
planning and scheduling method based on the UTVNM and University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer
CPS-based model is proposed to improve the sorting efficiency 26723 Emden, Germany
of the systems and the security of the multi-AGV operation. Email: awcolombo@ieee.org
Finally, the numerical experimental results reveal the efficiency
of the proposed method and further improve system security. S. KARNOUSKOS, Guest Editor
The paper entitled “Dependable scheduling for real-time SAP
workflows on cyber-physical cloud systems” by Zhou et Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16, 69190 Walldorf, Germany
al. investigates the reliability and security problems in the Email: karnouskos@ieee.org
cyber-physical cloud systems, which are integrations of cyber-
physical systems and cloud computing infrastructures. Since X. LI, Guest Editor
the lifetime reliability, security, and real-time constraints Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
should be satisfied under the soft-error reliability, the authors Duke University
propose a dependable algorithm using the available slack in Durham, NC 27708, USA
the system to recover failed tasks and hence improve its Email: xinli.ece@duke.edu
reliability. The proposed algorithm allows the available slack
in the system is shared by all workflow tasks. Meanwhile,
slack can also be applied in the security service of the system R EFERENCES
so that the required security can be ensured. Experiments on [1] A. W. Colombo, G. J. Veltink, J. Roa, and M. L. Caliusco,
real-world workflow benchmarks demonstrate the theories. “Learning industrial cyber-physical systems and industry
The paper entitled “A fairness-based collaborative com- 4.0-compliant solutions,” in 2020 IEEE Conference on
munication ecosystem over sustainable D2D fogs in a 5G Industrial Cyberphysical Systems (ICPS). IEEE, June
industrial IoT” by Wang et al. aims to release the data 2020.
transmission burden in a 5G IIoT. The authors introduce a [2] R. Baheti and H. Gill, “Cyber-physical systems,” The
novel collaborative communication ecosystem applying the Impact of Control Technology, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 161–
device-to-device (D2D) fogs devices to reduce the burden on 166, 2011.
transmission and promote fairness. Three contributing works [3] A. W. Colombo, T. Bangemann, S. Karnouskos, J. Delsing,
for activating the market and a genetic algorithm for searching P. Stluka, R. Harrison, F. Jammes, and J. L. Lastra, Eds.,

1551-3203 (c) 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 22,2021 at 11:53:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2021.3064881, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, SEPTEMBER 2021
Industrial Cloud-Based Cyber-Physical Systems. Springer
International Publishing, 2014.
[4] A. W. Colombo, S. Karnouskos, O. Kaynak, Y. Shi, and
S. Yin, “Industrial cyberphysical systems: A backbone of
the fourth industrial revolution,” IEEE Industrial Electron-
ics Magazine, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 6–16, March 2017.
[5] P. Leitao, F. Pires, S. Karnouskos, and A. W. Colombo,
“Quo vadis industry 4.0? position, trends, and challenges,”
IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society,
vol. 1, pp. 298–310, 2020.
[6] H. Lasi, P. Fettke, H.-G. Kemper, T. Feld, and M. Hoff-
mann, “Industry 4.0,” Business & Information Systems
Engineering, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 239–242, 2014.
[7] M. Wollschlaeger, T. Sauter, and J. Jasperneite, “The
future of industrial communication: Automation networks
in the era of the internet of things and industry 4.0,” IEEE
Industrial Electronics Magazine, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 17–27,
2017.
[8] B. Cheng, J. Zhang, G. P. Hancke, S. Karnouskos, and
A. W. Colombo, “Industrial cyberphysical systems: Real-
izing cloud-based big data infrastructures,” IEEE Indus-
trial Electronics Magazine, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 25–35,
March 2018.
[9] Q. Z. Sanjit Seshia, Shiyan Hu and W. Li, “Design au-
tomation of cyber-physical systems: Challenges, advances,
and opportunities,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided
Design, vol. 36, no. 9, pp. 1421–1434, September 2017.
Shiyan Hu (SM’ 10) received the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from
Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas, in 2008. He is currently
the Professor and Chair in Cyber-Physical System Security at the University
of Southampton, U.K. His research interests include cyber-physical systems
and cyber-physical system security, where he has published more than 150
refereed papers, including more than 60 in IEEE Transactions. He is the chair
of IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems. He is the editor-
in-chief of the IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications. He is an
associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and
Systems, ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems,
and ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems. He is a guest editor for
eight IEEE/ACM journals, such as the Proceedings of the IEEE and the IEEE
Transactions on Computers. He is a fellow of IET and a fellow of British
Computer Society.
Yang Shi (SM’09-F’17) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer
engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2005.
From 2005 to 2009, he was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor
in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatoon, SK, Canada. In 2009, he joined the University of Victoria, and now
he is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University
of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada. His current research interests include
networked and distributed systems, model predictive control (MPC), cyber-
physical systems (CPS), robotics and mechatronics, navigation and control of
autonomous systems (AUV and UAV), and energy system applications.
1551-3203 (c) 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 22,2021 at 11:53:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
3
Dr. Shi received the University of Saskatchewan Student Union Teaching
Excellence Award in 2007. At the University of Victoria, he received the
Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 2012, and the Craigdar-
roch Silver Medal for Excellence in Research in 2015. He received the JSPS
Invitation Fellowship (short-term) was a Visiting Professor with the University
of Tokyo during Nov.-Dec. 2013. His co-authored paper was awarded the
2017 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award. He
received the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers
in 2018. He is a member of the IEEE IES Administrative Committee
during 2017-2019, and he is currently the Chair of IEEE IES Technical
Committee on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems. Currently, he is Co-Editor-
in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics; He also serves
as Associate Editor for Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems
Technology, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, IEEE Transactions
on Cybernetics, etc. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME, Engineering Institute of
Canada (EIC), and Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME),
and a registered Professional Engineer in British Columbia, Canada.
Armando Colombo (F’16) received the B.Sc. degree in electronics engi-
neering from the National Technological University of Mendoza, Argentina,
in 1990, the M.Sc. degree in control system engineering from the National
University of San Juan, Argentina, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in production
systematization and automation engineering from the University of Erlangen-
Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany, in 1998. He joined the Department of
Electrotechnical and Industrial Informatics, University of Applied Sciences
Emden/Leer, Germany, where he became a Full Professor in August 2010
and the Director of the Institute for Industrial Informatics, Automation and
Robotics (I2AR), in 2012. From 2001 until 2018 he has been a Manager
for Collaborative Projects and also an Edison Level 2 Group Senior Expert
at Schneider Electric, Industrial Business Unit. He is Distinguished Lecturer
of the IEEE Systems Council as well as Co-Editor in Chief of the IEEE
Open Access Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society (OJIES). His
current research interests include industrial cyber-physical systems, industrial
digitalization, and system-of-systems engineering, Internet-of-Services, In-
dustry 4.0-compliant solutions. See https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=
FgFDTMEAAAAJ.
Stamatis Karnouskos (SM’09) is with SAP in Germany, dealing with
technology foresight, especially in the scope of industrial technologies and
enterprise systems. He has extensive experience in industrial research and
technology management. For more than twenty years, Stamatis has led
efforts in several European Commission and industry-funded innovation
projects related to industrial automation, smart cities, cloud-based services
and architectures, software agents, security, and mobility. Stamatis has co-
authored/edited several books relevant to the Industrial Internet of Things and
Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems.
Xin Li (F’17) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering
from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in 2005, and the MSc
and BSc degrees in electronics engineering from Fudan University, Shanghai,
China, in 2001 and 1998, respectively. He is currently a Professor with
the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University,
Durham, NC, USA, and leading the Institute of Applied Physical Sciences
and Engineering, Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, China. His research
interests include an integrated circuit, signal processing, and data analytics.
Dr. Li received the NSF CAREER Award in 2012, two IEEE Donald O.
Pederson Best Paper Awards in 2013 and 2016, the DAC Best Paper Award in
2010, two ICCAD Best Paper Awards in 2004 and 2011, the ISIC Best Paper
Award in 2014, and the Cadence Academic Collaboration Award in 2018,
and the Six Best Paper Nominations from DAC, ICCAD, and CICC. He is
the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-
AIDED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS. He was
an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-AIDED
DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, the IEEE TRANS-
ACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, the ACM Transactions on
Design Automation of Electronic Systems, IEEE DESIGN & TEST, and IET
Cyber-Physical Systems. He served on the Executive Committee of DAC,
ACM SIGDA, IEEE TCCPS, and IEEE TCVLSI. He was the General Chair of
ISVLSI, iNIS, and FAC, and the Technical Program Chair of CAD/Graphics.