Abstract
In modern manufacturing systems, various industrial communication systems (e.g., fieldbus systems and industrial Ethernet networks) have been used to realize reliable information exchange. However, these industrial communication solutions are largely incompatible with each other, which do not satisfy the new requirements of Industry 4.0. Recently Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) has been developed to improve the real-time capabilities to the standard Ethernet, and is considered to be a promising real-time communication solution for Industry 4.0. In this work, we propose a communication architecture for a manufacturing system using the Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) and TSN technologies. TSN is adopted as the communication backbone to connect heterogeneous industrial automation subsystems. The OPC UA is adopted to realize horizontal and vertical communication between subsystems in the field layer and the entities of the upper layers. We implement a laboratory-level manufacturing system to validate the proposed architecture. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and capability of the proposed architecture. Moreover, we evaluate the performance of a key TSN substandard, i.e., IEEE 802.1Qbv, in the laboratory-level manufacturing system. The evaluation results demonstrate that IEEE 802.1Qbv can indeed provide excellent real-time capabilities for industrial applications.
Highlights
I N factory automation systems, one of the key elements is the reliable exchange of information among various controllers, sensors, and actuators [1]
Communication networks, the so-called fieldbus systems, e.g., Profibus or Interbus, which laid in the lower layers of the automation pyramid architecture of a manufacturing system, were adopted to overcome the limitations caused by point-to-point connections among controllers, sensors, and actuators
We evaluated the performance of a key Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) substandard, i.e., IEEE 802.1Qbv standard, in the implemented experimental manufacturing system, and the results show that if all TSN devices are time-synchronized, IEEE 802.1Qbv standard can provide excellent real-time capabilities for industrial applications, even in the worst-case scenario
Summary
I N factory automation systems, one of the key elements is the reliable exchange of information among various controllers, sensors, and actuators [1]. There have not yet been works specifying an OPC UA TSN based communication architecture for a manufacturing system with heterogeneous networks, which introduces the OPC UA and TSN into a manufacturing system and enables the coexistence of legacy industrial communication solutions and OPC UA TSN technology. To bridge the research gap, we propose an OPC UA TSN based communication architecture for a manufacturing system with heterogeneous networks, which can satisfy the requirements of the Industry 4.0, relieve the cost pressure of replacing the existing legacy communication solutions, and enable the interoperability between different control subsystems using different communication solutions. It enables timecritical control traffic flows and nontime-critical traffic flows to converge on a single network without disrupting the transmission of time-critical control traffic flows It provides the following key benefits: deterministic latency and low jitter, ease of use, and better interoperability between solutions from different manufacturers [34]. The CUC obtains the configuration parameters for the TSN end stations from the CNC and configures the TSN end stations; the configuration parameters for the TSN switches are used by the CNC to configure the TSN switches
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