An OPC UA Based Architecture for Testing Tracking Simulation Methods

A tracking simulator is a simulation system that runs in parallel with the real process. They integrate model and process using a persistent and direct communication between the physical system and the simulation. In a tracking simulator, the simulation system receives data measured from the process instrumentation in order to adjust the model parameters so that the simulated state matches the real process state. Tracking simulation systems have a number of applications and the benefits in comparison to conventional simulation systems are numerous. This paper presents an architecture for testing different methods that can be used in tracking simulation. The proposed approach employs the OPC Unified Architecture as the protocol for the communication between the simulation model and the physical system. This work first introduces the structure of the testbed. Then, in order to test the proposed system, a previously published tracking method based on the tuning of the model parameters using PI controllers is implemented and the test results are shown. Finally, the conclusions and future work are discussed.