Dubai Airport Expands Public Announcement System with Matrikon OPC

Challenge

The RCF public announcement system has to work with the Niagara Building Management System at Dubai Airport Terminal 2. (BMS). Due to driver constraints, Niagara BMS’s Public Announcement (PA) system has a restricted number of drivers, and RCF is unable to interact directly with Niagara BMS. The expense and time required to develop new drivers were prohibitive. The new RCG system must be connected with the current Niagara BMS for control and monitoring, according to contract criteria. Furthermore, Dubai Airport needs the quickest and safest path to integration. The PA system was integrated with the existing Niagara BMS using Matrikon OPC Genie Technology.

Solution

Niagara BMS is an OPC-compliant device that can communicate with OPC Data Access DA 2.0 and 3.0 servers to exchange data. For monitoring and managing RCF devices, a series of commands can be delivered through a serial port. There was no alternative kind of interoperability accessible, such as an SDK (software development kit) or API (application programming interface) (application programmatic interface).

Results

After a successful proof of concept, the customer was able to acquire great trust in the Airport Project Team thanks to the MatrikonOPC quick development product (Genie Technology). In addition, the project was able to save a significant amount of money and time during development and execution. As a result of the OPC implementation, an open industrial protocol and standard has been created, resulting in vendor independence.