A Literature Survey on Open Platform Communications (OPC) Applied to Advanced Industrial Environments

Abstract

Extensive digitization and interconnection through networks have ushered in a number of new paradigms over the last years: Internet of Things, cyber–physical systems, Industry 4.0, etc. These challenging systems rely on an effective information communication between distributed components. Therefore, the heterogeneity of entities, both hardware and software, must be handled to achieve an operative interoperability and a proper behavior. However, there is also a heterogeneous availability of solutions; different technologies, protocols, and architectures aim to achieve a seamless interconnection. Henceforth, the standardization still requires great efforts from industrial and scientific environments. In this sense, the interface of the open platform communications (OPC) has supported connectivity for automation and supervision infrastructures for more than two decades. The OPC comprises the so-called classic OPC, the original protocol, as well as the last specification, unified architecture (UA). The widespread utilization of the classic OPC together with the powerful functionalities of OPC UA, make the latter one of the main candidates to lead the standardization and systems integration. This paper presents a survey of recent OPC-based systems reported in scientific literature for different domains as well as research projects. The goal of this paper is to provide a broad perspective about the OPC’ applicability and capabilities in order to support the decision about communication interfaces. The results are analyzed and discussed putting special attention on the aforementioned new paradigms. Finally, the main conclusions and open research directions are highlighted.

Insights into Mapping Solutions Based on OPC UA Information Model Applied to the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell

“…OPC UA plays an important role in current industry environments [8] and it is considered the most accepted protocol which harmonizes the machine to machine (M2M) interaction [9]. During these last years, OPC UA has proven to be an effective communications middleware mainly in industrial applications [10]. Due to its powerful functionalities, OPC UA is one of the main candidates to lead the standardization and systems integration for present and future frameworks [10].…”

“…During these last years, OPC UA has proven to be an effective communications middleware mainly in industrial applications [10]. Due to its powerful functionalities, OPC UA is one of the main candidates to lead the standardization and systems integration for present and future frameworks [10]. In particular, OPC UA is listed as the one recommendation for realizing the communication layer of RAMI 4.0 [11].…”

Using the open source library Libnodave for monitoring tasks in the Smart Grid scenario

“…Concerning automation units, PLC are focused on industrial infrastructures which must operate reliable for decades [25], so they are highly configurable and hardened for industrial scenarios and, even, their lifetime is in the range of decades. Moreover, PLC are being introduced also in the challenging paradigm of Industry 4.0 [4,7,11,13,18,19,24]. In addition, their reliable and stable behaviour promote their application out of the scope of typical industrial facilities.…”

Industrial Internet of Things and Fog Computing to Reduce Energy Consumption in Drinking Water Facilities

“…The developments were applied to a water facility model realized for this purpose and on a real system. The results prove the efficiency of the concept.The classical automation pyramid is transforming under the Industry 4.0 guidance into a different structure that facilitates direct connection and communication between entities [6-8].The current functional solutions from the industrial environment consist of a large variety of dispersed systems, both chronologically and by location, leading to the necessity of ensuring the interoperability of those solutions.Although the heterogeneity of devices used in industry naturally supported the appearance of many communication protocols (see [9][10][11]), the Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) was gradually imposed as the standard IIoT protocol.The studies from [12][13][14] analyze the current OPC UA implementations regarding Industry 4.0 specific digitalization solutions, while [15][16][17][18] have successfully used OPC UA for increasing both interoperability and connectivity of different automation systems, thus emphasizing that OPC UA is an essential requirement for any Industry 4.0 compliant technical system.The superior connectivity and interoperability between entities from technical systems under the Industry 4.0 guidance have led to the appearance of the data accumulation concept, which is primarily implemented in industry using historian applications [19,20].The data gathered by historian applications is mostly unused, although it opens new possibilities in the proactive historian applications area. Research towards stored data analysis algorithms and optimization strategies must provide insights into pattern identification, learning capabilities, and solid conclusions regarding real-world optimizations.…”

“…The studies from [12][13][14] analyze the current OPC UA implementations regarding Industry 4.0 specific digitalization solutions, while [15][16][17][18] have successfully used OPC UA for increasing both interoperability and connectivity of different automation systems, thus emphasizing that OPC UA is an essential requirement for any Industry 4.0 compliant technical system.…”