Hybrid OPC UA and DDS: Combining architectural styles for the industrial internet

Abstract

OPC UA and DDS are communication protocols for the Industrial Internet. However, they make use of contrasting communication patterns and represent different architectural styles. We discuss these differences and their impact in an Industrial Internet and Internet of Things context. Further, we show up the possibilities for hybrid implementations leveraging the features of both OPC UA and DDS. For this, we provide a) a mapping of the OPC UA data types into DDS and b) a set of DDS quality of service policies that match the guarantees made by the standard OPC UA binary protocol.