Tabu Search Algorithm for Communication Time Optimization in the CPDev Engineering Environment

Efficient communication is crucial for the correct operation of distributed control systems. This article is focused on the problem of reducing the communication cycle time during reading mixed register-binary data in the Modbus protocol from an industrial controller, especially implementing the CPDev engineering environment. A tabu-search algorithm was designed and implemented for optimization. Extensive computational experiments were performed and their results were compared with the results of previous studies in which constraint programming was used for the same problem. Comparison of the results revealed that the new algorithm is much faster and therefore suitable for practical use in real-time Modbus communication planning for the CPDev environment.