Improving device access efficiency using a device protocol matching model

The connectivity of devices and systems in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) enables interoperability and collaboration between industrial systems. Device access is the pathway to achieve connectivity, while protocol matching is the basis for device access. Protocol matching is a complex task due to the diverse range of device types, numerous protocols, the issues related to protocol privatization, and the reliance on domain knowledge. These complexities result in inefficient device access. To improve the device access efficiency, a Device Protocol Matching Model (DPMM) is proposed in this paper, which uses only the basic device information to find the best-matched protocol, including protocol identification and basic data. The DPMM adopts a two-stage strategy, consisting of an ontology creation stage and a protocol matching stage. In the ontology creation stage, a simplified device ontology is built to enable the uniform expression of device information and the representation of domain knowledge. In the protocol matching stage, a protocol matcher based on the Two-layer Cooperative Iteration (TCI) algorithm is designed to find the best-matched protocol. In the TCI, to achieve the global optimization of protocol matching efficiency, a penalty mechanism-based weight update method and learning-based matcher evolution are designed. Experiments in two scenarios: a communication base station and a copper smelting production line, are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the DPMM. The experimental results demonstrate that the DPMM can achieve automatic protocol matching with an average matching index of 80.3% and an average hit rate of 35.1%. Moreover, it significantly reduces network resource consumption by up to 96.7%, and increases the hit rate by up to 12.1 times compared with the existing methods.