Industry 4.0 Connectors -- A Performance Experiment with Modbus/TCP

Abstract: For Industry 4.0 applications, communication protocols and data formats even for legacy devices are fundamental. In this paper, we focus on the Modbus/TCP protocol, which is, e.g., used in energy metering. Allowing Industry 4.0 applications to include data from such protocols without need for programming would increase flexibility and, in turn, improve development efficiency. As one particular approach, we discuss the automated generation of Modbus/TCP connectors for our Open Source oktoflow platform and compare the performance of handcrafted as well as generated connectors in different settings, including industrial energy metering devices.