OPC UA Implementation for Industrial Automation - Part 2: Integrating PubSub Model with TSN

The advent of Industry 4.0 has brought out a new era of automation, highlighting the importance of seamless integration and interoperability across diverse systems in industrial environments. To facilitate efficient and secure data exchange, the OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) has emerged as a standardized communication framework in industrial automation. However, the traditional Ethernet-based infrastructure utilized for OPC UA cannot meet the stringent real-time requirements of time-critical applications. In industries relying on motion control applications like robotics or automated manufacturing, fast machine-to-machine communication is crucial. These applications demand precise and rapid data exchange to ensure the smooth and coordinated movement of machines. To address this challenge, it is crucial to assess the performance of the newly introduced Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) implementation and verify its ability to meet the requirements for critical industry applications. In this view, this paper implements OPC UA by integrating the OPC UA PubSub (Publisher-Subscriber) model with TSN. TSN represents a set of standards developed to enable deterministic and low-latency communication over Ethernet networks. Experimental results provide clear evidence that the combination of OPC UA with TSN improves performance, making it well-suited for demanding real-time applications.