Bachelor and Master Theses

To apply for conducting this thesis, please contact the thesis supervisor(s).
Title: OPC UA PubSub in a redundant setting
Subject: Embedded systems, Computer science, Computer network engineering, Software engineering, Robotics
Level: Advanced
Description:
Background
The future of industrial control systems is network-based, with standards like OPC UA enabling vendor interoperability. OPC UA includes a publish–subscribe (PubSub) communication model that is increasingly viewed as the future of field-device communication.
Control systems are often deployed in contexts where downtime can have severe consequences. To reduce the probability of downtime, redundant solutions—typically hardware duplication—are used.
This thesis addresses OPC UA PubSub in a redundant setting, focusing on achieving seamless failover, i.e., takeover by a backup upon primary failure.
 
Thesis details
The work is divided into three phases, with an optional last phase, which is to write or prepare a scientific publication from the results together with the master's thesis supervisors. 
 
Investigation phase
  • Familiarize yourself with OPC UA, and OPC UA PubSub in particular
    • Specifications and related work
    • Etc..
  • Review redundancy concepts
    • Standby redundancy
    • Failover
    • Etc..
  • Familiarize yourself with open62541, the open-source OPC UA communication stack
  • Use one of our earlier works, which identified problems and outlined solution alternatives, as input to propose and discuss different approaches

 

Design phase
  • Based on the investigation, develop a detailed design
  • Outline how the design will be integrated into open62541

 

Proof-of-concept and evaluation
  • Integrate the solution into open62541
  • Propose and develop an evaluation setup
    • Either based on existing setups that we have at ABB, or we develop something simpler for this purpose.
  • Perform measurements to deduce metrics for properties such as:
    • Recovery time
    • Synchronization limitations (bandwidth, deadlines imposed by the design, etc).
  • Optionally evaluate different alternatives (both design and implementation)
 
Start date:
End date:
Prerequisites:
Fields:
Suitable for master's students in computer engineering programs or software engineering.
 
Skils:
 
Responsibility:
Research and develop a proof-of-concept of integrating redundancy support in an open-source implementation of a communication stack. 

 
IDT supervisors: Bjarne Johansson Kasra Ekrad
Examiner: Mohammad Ashjaei
Comments:
Company contact:

You can read more about the thesis in the link below: 

https://careers.abb/sweden/se/job/JR00013081/Master-thesis-OPC-UA-PubSub-in-a-redundant-setting