OPC UA Information Modeling: A Case Study for Smart House

Abstract

Nowadays automation systems become more and more heterogeneous with various technologies and standards from different companies and vendors. Each technology has its own concept to model and present process data, leading to the need of a uniform view for the whole systems. OPC UA specification, the next generation of Classic OPC Standards, was introduced as a promising standard that is a good solution to address the issue. Some remarkable advantages of OPC UA have attracted attention: (i) information modeling, (ii) high-performing communication, and (iii) enhanced security mechanism. This paper aims at contributing in the first and big advantage of OPC UA, information modeling concept. Whereas Classic OPC has a poor and simple meta-data model providing tags, OPC UA uses standard information models to lift interoperability to the next level. It allows not only interoperable data exchange but also interoperable model. In our work, information modeling concept based on object-oriented techniques is exemplified by means of a case study for Smart House.