5G-Based Multi-Sensor Platform for Monitoring of Workpieces and Machines: Prototype Hardware Design and Firmware
, Roberto Padovani 3, Niels König 1 and Robert H. Schmitt 1,4,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript entitled 5G-based Multi-Sensor Platform for monitoring of workpieces and machines: prototype hardware design and firmware has demonstrated a prototype of 5G-based sensor platform.
The main objective looks interesting and new. However there are a few parts can be addressed for improving the paper scientific concept.
- Preliminary results need to clarify and include which can help to identify or validate the prototype functionalities.
- Please clearly describe how the device can meet the needs for industrial sensors. How 5G technology makes it better?
- A few English gramma errors, such as the sentence in line 107, "the measurement data flow", confused sentence.
Author Response
Point 1:
Preliminary results need to clarify and include which can help to identify or validate the prototype functionalities.
Response 1:
We have added a section for experimental setup, describing which sensors are integrated and how it is measured. The test are on going but we added preliminary results of the performance of 5G as compared to wired industrial solution
Point 2:
Please clearly describe how the device can meet the needs for industrial sensors. How 5G technology makes it better?
Response 2:
The 5G technology benefits are already described in our citation 7 , it would be redundant to include it again. we summerized the benefit of the 5G based Multi sensor platform in conclusion.
point 3:
A few English gramma errors, such as the sentence in line 107, "the measurement data flow", confused sentence.
Response 3:
The line 107 is reformatted to make it more understandable and can be found in the line 130
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Very major observations:
- First of all, the paper must contain a bibliographic study in which to make a comparison with recent articles, research studies or commercial solutions (2020 at the earliest) and to highlight the novelty elements and the strengths brought by the solution proposed by you in this paper proposal. Basically, for you, this study is limited to lines 41-45 on page 1 - so it's not convincing. Add at least 10 workpapers that you will cite as references (and which are articles published in journals, presented at international conferences, or even commercial solutions) in which to compare your solution with other solutions proposed there. In this way you will also improve your bibliographic references, which are now limited to technical reports and datasheets. You can use Google Scholar with a “ multisensor platform 5g” keyword search. For example, how does the solution proposed in your paper differ from that proposed in “Meeting the Requirements of Industrial Production with a Versatile Multi-Sensor Platform Based on 5G Communication” presented at a 2020 conference (https://ieeexplore.ieee. org / abstract / document / 9217230)? The study containing the 10 references should be added in the "Introduction" section.
- Secondly, I consider that the experimental results are missing from your paper. Indeed, you describe how you implemented a set of basic Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) functions and further tasks that take data from sensors. However, you should add another chapter "Experimental results" (before “Conclusions”) showing:
- Either measurement results: acquisition times, error rates, tolerances, etc. for each sensor.
- Either present a case study showing how your system was used to monitor an industrial process and what the benefits were.
Medium observations:
- Why you chose STM32F429I ™ Discovery Kit as the basis for your prototype. Why did you choose those sensors? I believe that a clarification should be introduced in this regard in "Materials and Methods". Are you following a specific industrial process to monitor it?
- Citation [8] line 88 page 3 is ambiguous. In it you refer to figure 2 but if we go to figure 2 we see that it is cited from the reference [2]. Clarify this.
- Why did you refer to [9] in Figure 2? Reference [9] leads to a solution from Marposs. Is it part of your implemented prototype? Clarify!
- Why did you refer to [10] in Figure 3? Reference [10] is the catalog datasheet of the STM32F4xx MCU, and Figure 3 shows a prototype that you developed (am I right?) or a development kit - clarify or correct (delete) the reference.
Author Response
Point 1:
First of all, the paper must contain a bibliographic study in which to make a comparison with recent articles, research studies or commercial solutions (2020 at the earliest) and to highlight the novelty elements and the strengths brought by the solution proposed by you in this paper proposal. Basically, for you, this study is limited to lines 41-45 on page 1 - so it's not convincing. Add at least 10 workpapers that you will cite as references (and which are articles published in journals, presented at international conferences, or even commercial solutions) in which to compare your solution with other solutions proposed there. In this way you will also improve your bibliographic references, which are now limited to technical reports and datasheets. You can use Google Scholar with a “ multisensor platform 5g” keyword search. For example, how does the solution proposed in your paper differ from that proposed in “Meeting the Requirements of Industrial Production with a Versatile Multi-Sensor Platform Based on 5G Communication” presented at a 2020 conference (https://ieeexplore.ieee. org / abstract / document / 9217230)? The study containing the 10 references should be added in the "Introduction" section.
Response 1: We have added more references on the existing off the shelf platforms, current research platforms and compared with the proposed platform. we didnt mention that the current paper is the extension of the paper "Meeting the Requirements of Industrial Production with a Versatile Multi-Sensor Platform Based on 5G Communication”. This is has been corrected with added reference. The changes can be seen in page 41 - 58.
Point 2:
Secondly, I consider that the experimental results are missing from your paper. Indeed, you describe how you implemented a set of basic Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) functions and further tasks that take data from sensors. However, you should add another chapter "Experimental results" (before “Conclusions”) showing:
- Either measurement results: acquisition times, error rates, tolerances, etc. for each sensor.
- Either present a case study showing how your system was used to monitor an industrial process and what the benefits were.
Response 2:
We have added experimental setup describing the scenario and the use case.
The focus of the experiment would be the performance of the 5G based system. The sensors are compared with the industrial solution with same set of configuration such as sampling frequency and periodicity. The experiment is currently on going and we have preliminary results on how the 5G solution is performing in terms of latency.
Point 3
Why you chose STM32F429I ™ Discovery Kit as the basis for your prototype. Why did you choose those sensors? I believe that a clarification should be introduced in this regard in "Materials and Methods". Are you following a specific industrial process to monitor it?
Response :
The paragraph is reiterated and removing the STM32F4 discovery kit. The justification for using the microcontroller is provided in session 4.1. The sensor are chosen as per the requirements which is cited in 10 "D1.1 Forward Looking Smart Manufacturing Use Cases, Requirements and KPIs'.
Point 4:
Citation [8] line 88 page 3 is ambiguous. In it you refer to figure 2 but if we go to figure 2 we see that it is cited from the reference [2]. Clarify this.
Response 4:
We removed the reference in line 88 as it doesnt relate to refernce [2]
Point 5:
Why did you refer to [9] in Figure 2? Reference [9] leads to a solution from Marposs. Is it part of your implemented prototype? Clarify!
Response 5:
The reference is removed. the Figure 2 is to show the use case of the sensor platform for condition monitoring in a factory floor.
Point 6:
Why did you refer to [10] in Figure 3? Reference [10] is the catalog datasheet of the STM32F4xx MCU, and Figure 3 shows a prototype that you developed (am I right?) or a development kit - clarify or correct (delete) the reference.
We removed the reference as it does not match the catalog and is the picture of the developed sensor platform.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The author responded to all my observations. The following must be corrected in the final form of the article (these errors appear in the new revision)
- Label "Figure 1" appear twice. Correct and renumber figures.
- "Error! Reference source not found" on page 11. Correct it!
- Title "Experimental setup and results" incorrect placed and is separate from the number of the section (7).
