Protocol interoperability of OPC UA in service oriented architectures

Industrial Internet of Things covers all aspects of networked intelligent manufacturing systems. This means covering a wide array of application domains and user requirements. In such scenarios it is not feasible to define a single protocol for all situations. Hence, a multi-protocol approach is required. OPC UA has strong backing from Industry 4.0 as the protocol for the Industrial Internet of Things. Interoperability of OPC UA has been investigated in the context of migration from legacy and with protocols such as DPWS. Additionally HTTP and CoAP have been investigated as possible transport mediums. However, OPC UA interoperability has not been investigated within a multi-protocol settings and no generic protocol translation exists. This paper proposes an OPC UA translator following the service translator model proposed in the Arrowhead project. Utilizing a mapping to intermediate format, it can be used along side CoAP, HTTP and MQTT protocols.