VSOMEIP - OPC UA Gateway Solution for the Automotive Industry

OPC UA Publish-Subscribe and VSOME/IP Notify-Subscribe Based Gateway Application in the Context of Car to Infrastructure Communication

“…A way to test the concept is to have a third client that reads the data from the server, displays it and depending on the timestamp used for changing the values in the node destined to store the color, a user can regularly check the functionality of the concept. The bidirectional communication is achieved in a different manner than in [ 23 ], not by sending acknowledge messages (it is not desired in the current scenario to write a different value in the node by the gateway application), but by changing the value associated to the light of the semaphore at a certain period of time and only reading the values from the server with the gateway application. The OPC UA server will have the IP of the device assigned trough a hostname and the connection to the server can be done either with that IP for any device inside the same network, or with the IP of the router that manages the network for devices connected to the same network or connected to different networks.…”

“…The next link in the information exchange is the gateway application that will read the information from the OPC UA server and send it to the VSOME/IP client. As in [ 23 ], there are two modules that are part of the gateway application. The first module is the OPCUA client, which reads the information from the OPC UA server following the Publish-Subscribe mechanism with UDP protocol on the transport layer.…”

“…The second module is the VSOME/IP service that will take the values received by the OPCUA client and prepare them to be sent to the VSOME/IP client by creating a specific payload. A different pattern that the one used by the authors in [ 23 ] was used for VSOME/IP communication. For the current study, the Notify-Subscribe mechanism was chosen, providing a faster and more efficient exchange of data between the VSOME/IP service and client.…”

“…For the current study, the Notify-Subscribe mechanism was chosen, providing a faster and more efficient exchange of data between the VSOME/IP service and client. In [ 23 ], the bidirectional communication was achieved by exchanging acknowledge messages between the VSOME/IP client and service, process that is not needed when using the Notify-Subscribe pattern. For the communication to be made over the air, some network inputs are necessary for the gateway application, such as IP of the device, netmask, port, and others.…”

“…In the above-mentioned context and the new technological researches especially regarding OPC UA, the current paper extends and improves the conceptual approach of the VSOME/IP—OPC UA Gateway presented in [ 23 ]. The new approach focuses on: The development of a VSOME/IP—OPC UA Gateway in the context of a detailed analysis and development of the OPC UA Publish-Subscribe mechanism with respect to the TSN technology and considering the OSI model; Presenting the necessary steps to implement the OPC UA Publish-Subscribe mechanism and to be tested together with the VSOME/IP Notify-Subscribe mechanism using a VSOME/IP—OPC UA gateway experimental model; Analyzing and implementing the real-time behavior on the application level through synchronizing some processes associated with the involved entities; Providing a clear view over some intensively stated new concepts that will be of high importance in the vehicle to infrastructure context.…”