New Control System Aspects for Supporting Complex Data and High Performance System

Abstract

The data in automation and control systems can be achieved not only from different field devices but also from different OPC (OLE for Process Control) servers. However, current OPC clients can only read and decode the simple data from OPC servers. They will have some problems to acquire structured data and exchange the structured data. In addition to the large network control systems, the OPC clients can read, write, and subscribe to thousands of data points from/to OPC servers. Due to that, the most important factor for building a high performance and scalable industrial control system is the ability to transfer the process data between server and client in the most efficient and fastest way. In order to solve these problems, we propose a means to implement the OPC DA (Data Access) server supporting the OPC complex data, so that the OPC DA clients are able to read and decode any type of data from OPC servers. We also propose a method for caching the process data in large industrial control systems to overcome the limitation of performance of the pure OPC DA system. The performance analysis and discussion indicate that the proposed system has an acceptable performance and is feasible in order for applying to real-time industrial systems today.