OPC Foundation OPC UA FX

OPC UA FX (Field eXchange) is an extension of OPC UA for field-level industrial automation. Its scope includes real-time communication, functional safety, instrumentation, motion control, and remote I/O. The work is organized through OPC Foundation Field Level Communications working groups, including networking topics for Ethernet and TSN.

Source checked4/4 values · 2026-10-25

Specification

2 sources

Transports	ethernet l2
Architecture	publish subscribe
Encoding	binary
Standard body	OPC Foundation
Standard ref	OPC 10000-80

Study notes

The FLC initiative extends OPC UA to the field level for industrial automation requirements.
FLC scope includes real-time, functional safety, instrumentation, motion control, and remote I/O.
Technical working groups cover architecture, base facets, offline engineering, networking, safety, motion, instrumentation, IO, prototyping, and test development.
The Networking Working Group defines lower-layer OSI communication interfaces and behaviors for UAFX devices on Ethernet networks with and without TSN capabilities.
Offline engineering defines configuration of simple, complex, and modular field devices before physical delivery and deployment when the system comes online.
TSN work aligns IEC/IEEE 60802, IEEE 802.1, and OPC UA PubSub TSN.
Certification work defines test cases based on conformance units, profiles, and facets.
OPC 10000-80 version 1.00.03 was published 2025-07-17 and is marked current.

Safety

OPC UA Safety uses a black-channel approach for controller-to-controller and controller-to-device safety communication.
The Safety Working Group covers safety controllers, functionally safe digital and analog IO, and electric drives with safety functions.
The Certification Requirements Subgroup analyzes testing and certification requirements for UAFX controllers and devices.
Functional safety is included in the FLC scope for field-level OPC UA.