MQTT and OPC-UA are the two most popular protocols in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environments.
OPC UA (Open Platform Unified Communication Architecture) is a platform-independent standard that allows various types of systems and devices to communicate by sending request and response messages between clients and servers, or through a publish-subscribe model similar to MQTT. OPC UA is primarily used for device-to-device communication, particularly in industrial settings, with the aim of providing a common language for different industrial devices to facilitate communication.
MQTT, short for Message Queue Transferring Transport, is a lightweight, scalable internet protocol used to support global communication in the Internet of Things (IoT). Specifically designed for IoT interactions, MQTT places low demands on device resources, ensuring high efficiency (supporting low-bandwidth networks). It addresses the challenge of transmitting IoT sensors over the internet (low bandwidth, unreliable network transmission of continuous real-time data), and its publish/subscribe mechanism offers great flexibility.
IoT Connect Industrial IoT Solutions
In industrial IoT applications, smart gateways collect data from devices (mainly PLCs) using OPC UA, while data is transmitted to the cloud using MQTT.
