Bridging the Gap between Digital Object Memory Information and Its Binary Representation

Abstract

Today, several applications in the domain of industrial production and logistics use information stored on smart labels to control processes or monitor the flow of goods. This often complex information is represented by bits and bytes e.g. on a RFID transponder and is usually modeled accordingly, by arranging the bits and bytes in an order suitable for the specific application at hand. Accessing the information means coding this order into read/write algorithms in PLCs or other automation systems, making it difficult and expensive to add, rearrange or remove pieces of information. To increase the benefit of IoT technologies and to allow a seamless migration of the underlying tag technologies, future systems thus have to abstract from the information and its binary representation.In this paper we introduce a mapping technology that enables the separation of information and its' Digital Object Memory (DOM)-specific memory representation. The key of this concept is an XML schema used for the separated description of information and its DOM-specific memory address. A server has been developed that stores those tag-specific XML documents and supports querying for the requested information addresses. To demonstrate the feasibility of the approach this mapping technology has been used in combination with a programmable logic controller (PLC) to enable the flexible migration of various smart label technologies and DOM representations avoiding the necessity to change the PLC application code.