AoI based Data Freshness Improvement Possibility Analysis for Industrial Automation Systems

Gukcheol Choi, Junhwan Huh, Yunseob Kim, Donghyun Kim, Jongdeok Kim

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2022.49.9.788

Recently, industrial automation systems have been used with various equipment and industrial protocols to provide high-level process automation. When performing real-time status information update in a network composed of various protocols, transmission delay can occur if the data processing speed of each protocol is not considered when transmitting and receiving data between heterogeneous protocols. Transmission delay causes problems with monitoring and controlling based on the old state information. Therefore, it is important to update the status information at appropriate intervals so that the destination system receives fresh information. In this paper, we analyze the problem caused by the difference in the data processing speed of each protocol during heterogeneous EtherCAT and OPC UA protocol communication using AoI (Age of Information), a metric of data freshness, and then we propose a method to find an appropriate update cycle.