Semantic Interoperability in the Industry 4.0 Using the IEEE 1451 Standard

Interoperability is one of the important characteristics of the Internet of Things. The interoperability enables smart things to exchange data in different areas with different levels of interoperability. Industrial Internet of Things is one of them, and it has the focus in the manufacturing process and connected with other associated ideas as Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical Systems, and Cyber-Physical Production Systems. It is mandatory to define reference architectures models to manage the Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things. The reference models enable semantic interoperability. A reference model provides a bottom/top view of an industrial process, going from the business to the physical layer. At the physical layer, it is necessary to combine physical things with digital world representations, extending its functionalities in the manufacturing process. IEEE 1451 family standards has the essential characteristics to support the exchange of information between IoT applications and sensors & actuators, allowing the industry to build digital elements and meets the Industry 4.0 requirements. This paper presents the reference models proposed for Industry 4.0, taking as reference the implementation and adoption of the IEEE 1451 standard as an option to acquire data and communicates inside of an industrial process. However, at this point, IEEE 1451 enables to achieve the syntactic level of interoperability, in this paper is discussed how to achieve the semantic level of interoperability using the IEEE 1451 family of standards.