Softing Inc. demonstrated its prototype of the new Publisher/Subscriber extension of the OPC UA standard at the SPS IPC Drives 2015 tradeshow, Nov. 24-26, in Nuremberg, Germany. This functionality allows a standard Ethernet network to be used for deterministic data exchange based on the emerging IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) standard.
For its demonstration, this real-time OPC UA Publisher/Subscriber stack was deployed in two Softing industrial Ethernet gateways. The application communicates via TSN-enabled switches and a standard Ethernet network in a deterministic way, even if more network load is added to the Ethernet infrastructure.
The OPC UA Publisher/Subscriber stack is based on connectionless, UDP-secure, multicast communications, and features:
Guarantee of service for controller-to-controller communications;
- Deterministic communication via an existing Ethernet-based infrastructure;
- Convergence of control process, streaming and data traffic over one standard Ethernet network without affecting real-time data delivery or wasting bandwidth; and
- Design that addresses Industry 4.0/Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) requirements.
