The present work proposes the use of a combination of standardized middleware technologies, such as CORBA-RT and DDS in order to build Electrical Protection Relays in a modular and scalable way. Both CORBA and DDS follow different approaches, while CORBA is basically a Client / Server architecture, DDS follows the publisher/subscriber paradigm. However, IEDs generate different types of traffic that could be mapped to either CORBA, or DDS operations, leaving DDS for the most critical ones: the distribution of periodic samples values and substation events. The paper also analyses the behaviour of DDS for these types of operations.
DDS is a recent specification aimed at providing high-performance publisher/subscriber middleware solutions. Despite being a very powerful flexible technology, it may prove complex to use, especially for the inexperienced. This work provides some guidelines for connecting software components that represent a new generation of automation devices (such as PLCs, IPCs and robots) using Data Distribution Service (DDS) as a virtual software bus. More specifically, it presents the design of a DDS-based component, the so-called Automation Component, and discusses how to map different traffic patterns using DDS entities exploiting the wealth of QoS management mechanisms provided by the DDS specification. A case study demonstrates the creation of factory automation applications out of software components that encapsulate independent stations.
Although a few industrial automation systems have also been implemented with DDS, this standard has not yet gained much significance in factory automation applications for several reasons. One of these reasons is that since DDS is aimed at a broad range of application domains and it may be necessary to provide certain guidelines in order to use it efficiently in factory automation applications by automation engineers. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the types of traffic found in this kind of applications and describing how to configure the QoS parameters DDS provides. It also presents an ongoing case study that illustrates the application of DDS as communication backbone in factory automation applications.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.