An IoT Protocol Evaluation in a Smart Factory Environment

Abstract

Decision making and data management are critical features for companies to leverage their productivity and revenues. With the advancement of Industry 4.0, smart factories are increasing their investment in cyber-physical systems and digital processing. An extensive field of study that allows this growth is the Internet of Things (IoT). As factories desire velocity and impact in their systems, an IoT network connecting devices, sensors, and robots provides planning and managing advantages. In this work, we compare AMQP and MQTT, two mainstreams IoT protocols, in a smart factory environment. We also include in the comparison the popular robotic communication platform named ROS. The results show that, overall, MQTT performed better than AMQP, which is expected, given that MQTT is a lightweight protocol. However, AMQP initial connections between peers are faster. In this work, we discuss such behaviors and other questions regarding the IoT protocols and how and why they should be implemented in a smart factory environment.