Achieving interoperability using low-cost middleware OPC UA wrapping structure. Case study in the water industry

Silea

2019

Water

Self Cite

Current efforts towards achieving better connectivity and increasing intelligence in functioning of industrial processes are guided by the Industrial Internet of Things paradigm and implicitly stimulate occurrence of data accumulation. In recent years, several researchers and industrial products have presented Historian application solutions for data accumulation. The large amounts of data that are gathered by these Historians remains mostly unused or used only for reporting purposes. So far, Historians have been focused on connectivity, data manipulation possibilities, and sometimes on low-cost solutions in order to gain higher applicability or to integrate multiple SCADA servers (e.g. Siemens–WinCC, Schneider Electric – Vijeo Citect, IGSS, Wonderware, InduSoft Web Studio, Inductive Automation – Ignition, etc.), etc. Both literature and industry are currently unable to identify a Historian solution that functions in fog and efficiently applies and is built upon Industry 4.0 ideas. The future is to conceive a proactive Historian that is able to, besides gathering data, identify dependencies and patterns for particular processes and elaborate strategies to increase performance in order to provide feedback through corrective action on the functional system. Using available solutions, determining patterns by the Historian operator in the context of big data is a tremendous effort. The motivation of this research is provided by the currently unoptimized and partly inefficient systems in the water industry that can benefit from cost reduction and quality indicator improvements through IIoT concepts related to data processing and process adjustments. As the first part of more complex research to obtain a proactive Historian, the current paper wishes to propose a reference architecture and to address the issue of data dependency analyses as part of pattern identification structures. The conceptual approach targets a highly customizable solution considering the variety of industrial processes, but it also underlines basic software modules as generally applicable for the same reason. To prove the efficiency of the obtained solution in the context of real industrial processes, and their corresponding monitoring and control solutions, the paper presents a test scenario in the water industry.

Section: Interoperability and Historianmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Data Dependencies as First Step to Obtain a Proactive Historian: Test Scenario in the Water Industry 4.0

Nicolae

Silea

2019

Water

Self Cite

“…Nevertheless, the aforementioned IIoT and Industry 4.0 ideas have gradually begun to make their presence felt in the water industry as well, initially tackling the interoperability issue with the introduction of a standardized, platform independent communication architecture, the Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ] and various advances in the networking area, such as time-sensitive networking (TSN) [ 28 ] or the publisher-subscriber model [ 29 ], among others. After this initial development mostly targeted infrastructure-level services, other relevant researches began to emerge in this context, even towards the energy consumption of this industrial branch, similar to the ones from [ 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complete Automation of an Energy Consumption Reduction Strategy from a Water Treatment and Distribution Facility, Inside an Industrial Internet of Things-Compliant Proactive Historian Application

Nicolae

Silea

2021

Sensors

Self Cite

The Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 paradigms are steering the industrial landscape towards better connected entities, superior interoperability and information exchange, which lays the basis for developing more intelligent solutions that are already starting to bring numerous benefits. The current research aligns to this course, in an attempt to build an automated and autonomous software tool, capable of reducing the energy consumption of a water treatment and distribution facility, by optimizing the water sources usage. Based on several previous researches, the present paper details both the complete automation of the optimizing strategy inside a proactive historian application and the tests executed with the finished solution. Possessing the abilities to directly influence the monitored system in a non-invasive manner, and to link all the sequences of the algorithm automatically, the solution is now ready for long-term functioning without any external interference.

“…These examples are widespread throughout the industry and chronology and the recent years’ high pace developments are showing more and more situations. The need for data integration and lack of a complete IIoT picture often implements a local legacy protocol that is integrated using centralizing Open Platform Communication (OPC) servers without considering direct Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) interfacing or local OPC UA wrappers [ 1 , 2 ]. The need for collaborative robots (cobots) alignment to functional requirements often leads to fast solutions within the companies that are completely lacking industrial protocol, robustness, compatibility, and security (e.g., string-based basic particular communication strategy developed within small research and development teams inside companies).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaching OPC UA Publish–Subscribe in the Context of UDP-Based Multi-Channel Communication and Image Transmission

Ioana

Burlacu

2021

Sensors

Self Cite

The Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol is a key enabler of Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). OPC UA is already accepted by the industry and its presence is expected to reach more and more fields, applications, and hierarchical levels. Advances within the latest specifications are providing the opportunity to extend the capabilities and the applicability of the protocol, targeting better performances in terms of data volumes, speed, availability, footprint, and security. Continuing previous researches focusing on the publish–subscribe (pub/sub) mechanism and real-time constraints, the current study aims to consider higher data-volumes, approach the multi-channel User Datagram Protocol (UDP)-based communication, and analyze the robustness of the developed mechanism in the context of long-term data transmission. Consequently, the research proposes to extend the applicability of the OPC UA in the context of image transmission. Although highly needed, the image transmission after processing is currently beyond the reach of OPC UA or other legacy industrial protocols, being considered as a separate fraction in the industrial environment. The concept and developments are applied considering both the end-of-line industrial manufacturing process in the automotive sector and the car-to-infrastructure communication. Without special hardware constraints, the obtained results are proven to be appreciable, opening various future perspectives for image transmission using OPC UA.