Peer-to-peer communication for virtual industrial devices

The use of virtual industrial devices, i.e., software components in the form of objects, for representing real industrial devices is a widely accepted approach when modelling industrial plants. Object-oriented middleware integration technologies are usually used as communication backbones to support the communication services that virtual industrial devices require. However, such middleware technologies restrict the communication capabilities of these virtual industrial devices (restricting its accessibility) because they rely on specific communication protocols. In this paper we present a peer-to-peer communication protocol that enabling the simple object access protocol with a new routing service allows communication between virtual industrial devices regardless the communication technology that supports the actual messaging.