Realising Interoperability Between OPC UA and OCF

The paper deals with the interoperability issue inside Industry 4.0. Definition and adoption of communication standards are of paramount importance to improve the interoperability of industrial applications. For this reason, during the last few years, different organisations have developed reference architectures to align standards in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. Among them, an important role is played by OPC UA international standard (IEC 62541). Application in industrial contexts of modern Information & Communication Technology (ICT) concepts, such as Internet of Things (IoT), is a key-point in Industry 4.0. For this reason, the current literature presents several proposals aimed to improve interoperability between reference standards in Industry 4.0 and IoT ecosystems. The paper proposes a solution towards interoperability between OPC UA and IoT, based on the mapping of OPC UA and Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) specifications defined very recently to enable the interoperability inside the IoT ecosystem. Although other examples of integration of OPC UA with the IoT are present in the current literature, the proposal is original as interoperability between OPC UA and OCF has not been treated until now. The proposal may also have a potential impact on the current definition of OCF specifications, as it will be pointed out in the paper.