Abstract
Continuing the evolution towards Industry 4.0, the industrial communication protocols represent a significant topic of interest, as real-time data exchange between multiple devices constitute the pillar of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) scenarios. Although the legacy protocols are still persistent in the industry, the transition was initiated by the key Industry 4.0 facilitating protocol, the Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA). OPC UA has to reach the envisioned applicability, and it therefore has to consider coexistence with other emerging real-time oriented protocols in the production lines. The Data Distribution Service (DDS) will certainly be present in future architectures in some areas as robots, co-bots, and compact units. The current paper proposes a solution to evaluate the real-time coexistence of OPC UA and DDS protocols, functioning in parallel and in a gateway context. The purpose is to confirm the compatibility and feasibility between the two protocols alongside a general definition of criteria and expectations from an architectural point of view, pointing out advantages and disadvantages in a neutral manner, shaping a comprehensive view of the possibilities. The researched architecture is meant to comply with both performance comparison scenarios and interaction scenarios over a gateway application. Considering the industrial tendencies, the developed solution is applied using non-ideal infrastructures to provide a more feasible and faster applicability in the production lines.
Highlights
Safety, productivity, and cost reduction, the manufacturing industry is stepping towards Industry 4.0 and towards the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the two concepts being strongly related
The first challenge represented by the legacy protocols was overcome by the transition towards the key enabler of Industry 4.0, the Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol [4]
The availability of multiple mechanisms to be used for information exchange makes Data Distribution Service (DDS) a flexible and scalable solution when taking into consideration the constant evolution of the requirements in the context of IIoT
Summary
Safety, productivity, and cost reduction, the manufacturing industry is stepping towards Industry 4.0 and towards the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the two concepts being strongly related. All the improvements within the Industry 4.0 and IIoT context are relying on the ability to collect and exchange data between devices [1,2,3], and on such concepts as interfacing, interoperability, interoperation, and connectivity. The communication protocols implicitly represent a very important research topic in the current industrial revolution. The first challenge represented by the legacy protocols was overcome by the transition towards the key enabler of Industry 4.0, the Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol [4]. The long chronological dispersion and duration of automation systems and the slow progress in research and applicability of modern protocols are still determining a widespread presence of legacy protocols. The industrial requirements determine the research of various wrapping solutions to increment performance [5]. One of the essential objectives for achieving fast results is the identification of the right solutions and the confirmation of their compatibility in authentic circumstances
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