An Interoperability Middleware for IIoT.

Concepts of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things are increasingly common nowadays due to the latest communication technology and microelectronics innovations. However, with the advancement of these technologies, various companies have developed a significant number of new devices, IoT platforms, and communication protocols, causing interoperability issues. In an industry, interoperability relates to different aspects, such as physical communication, divergent device communication protocols, and syntactical problems, referring to distinct data structures. So, communication problems can make it unfeasible to use heterogeneous devices, increasing the project’s financial cost and development time. Developing a new standard for solving these matters may bring interoperability-related drawbacks rather than effectively solving these issues. For this reason, this paper proposes developing middleware for IIoT gateways to mitigate interoperability issues by combining standard ontologies and standardized digital representation. The middleware was evaluated in a use case application scenario that consists of three devices equipped with at least five actuators and sensors, using different communication protocols and data structures.