Message Broker Decoupling Industrial Control Messaging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional industrial control systems face challenges with reliable messaging due to synchronous-based communication methods, leading to failed communications, delayed responses, and increased overhead, especially when senders and recipients are unavailable.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a message broker that decouples senders from recipients, allowing messages to be stored, managed, and retrieved independently of the sender's or recipient's state, ensuring reliable transmission and receipt through asynchronous or synchronous messaging, with support for various communication protocols and security mechanisms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If synchronous-based messaging is used in conventional industrial control systems, then direct communication between sender and recipient is achieved, but communication failures occur when senders or recipients are unavailable, leading to delayed responses and increased overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a message broker as an intermediary component that receives messages from senders and delivers them to recipients. The broker decouples the messaging process into independent stages: message submission to the broker, message storage in a queue, and message retrieval by the recipient. This allows senders to proceed without waiting for recipient availability, eliminating communication failures due to unavailability while maintaining reliable delivery through the broker's message queue mechanism
2Reliability
If retry logic is implemented to handle message failures, then message delivery reliability is improved, but system complexity and overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The message broker is configured with a message queue that pre-establishes a storage mechanism for messages before transmission attempts. Instead of implementing complex retry logic that requires tracking failed messages, scheduling retransmissions, and handling timeouts, the system preliminarily sets up the queue structure that automatically retains messages. This eliminates the need for retry mechanisms while ensuring reliable delivery, as messages are safely stored and delivered when recipients become available
3Reliability
If asynchronous messaging with message brokers is implemented, then overhead is reduced and reliability is improved, but additional components and infrastructure are required
Solution Approach 1:
The message broker is designed as a multi-functional component that simultaneously provides message reception, queue management, message storage, and message delivery within a single system element. It handles multiple messaging scenarios including one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-one communication patterns. The broker also manages message priorities, filtering, and routing without requiring separate specialized components for each function, thereby reducing overall system complexity while maintaining high reliability
Data Source
AI summary
The subject invention provides reliable messaging with and within a control environment. The systems and methods utilize a message broker that facilitates message exchange. The message broker can be located within an industrial controller, as a dedicated entity within a control environment and/or an entity external to the control environment. Messages transmitted from an industrial controller and/or the external entity can be routed through the message broker prior to reaching a destination, wherein the message can be stored in the message broker and subsequently obtained by a recipient. The message broker decouples the message sender (e.g., an industrial controller, an external entity . . . ) from the message recipient (e.g., an industrial controller, an external entity . . . ) such that messages can be successfully transmitted (to the message broker) regardless of a state of the recipient, and messages can be retrieved (from the message broker) regardless of a state of the sender.