Experimental Implementation and Performance Evaluation of an IoT Access Gateway for the Modbus Extension

Area of Science:

• Industrial Automation and Control Systems
• Internet of Things (IoT) Architectures
• Communication Protocols

Background:

• The Modbus protocol is a widely used standard in industrial automation.
• Existing Modbus implementations face limitations in deterministic behavior and IoT integration.
• There is a need for enhanced Modbus protocols to support modern IoT applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present the experimental implementation and performance evaluation of an IoT gateway for an extended Modbus protocol.
• To define new specifications for an optimized Modbus message format and acquisition cycle.
• To validate the performance and efficiency of the proposed Modbus extension.

Main Methods:

• Development of an optimized Modbus extension with a new message format and acquisition cycle structure.
• Implementation of three different gateway versions supporting the Modbus extension.
• Experimental analysis and validation of the extension's performance, including processing times and component effects.

Main Results:

• The proposed Modbus extension demonstrates efficient use of acquisition cycle time.
• Analysis of software and hardware processing times provides insights into component performance.
• The implemented gateway successfully supports the extended Modbus functions for industrial applications.

Conclusions:

• The developed Modbus extension and IoT gateway offer improved performance and new features for industrial process monitoring and control.
• The study validates the deterministic temporal behavior and efficiency of the extended protocol.
• This work contributes to the advancement of local industrial networks by strengthening Modbus capabilities for IoT integration.