A Data-Oriented M2M Messaging Mechanism for Industrial IoT Applications

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is a key enabling technology for the future industrial Internet of Things applications. It plays an important role in the connectivity and integration of computerized machines, such as sensors, actuators, controllers, and robots. The requirements in flexibility, efficiency, and cross-platform compatibility of the intermodule communication between the connected machines raise challenges for the M2M messaging mechanism toward ubiquitous data access and events notification. This investigation determines the challenges facing the M2M communication of industrial systems and presents a data-oriented M2M messaging mechanism based on ZeroMQ for the ubiquitous data access in rich sensing pervasive industrial applications. To prove the feasibility of the proposed solution, the EU funded PickNPack production line with a reference industrial network architecture is presented, and the communication between a microwave sensor device and the quality assessment and sensing module controller of the PickNPack line is illustrated as a case study. The evaluation is carried out through qualitative analysis and experimental studies, and the results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed messaging mechanism. Due to the flexibility in dealing with hierarchical system architecture and cross-platform heterogeneity of industrial applications, this messaging mechanism deserves extensive investigations and further evaluations.