Development of Industrial EthernetFigure

Development of Industrial EthernetFigure 1 is from the ARC Advisory Group's market data. ARC forecasts in the next few years, industrial Ethernet market will grow strongly. Which, in the 2011 Industrial Ethernet devices and switch sales compound annual growth rate of 30%
Figure 1 ARC Advisory Group forecasts: the next five years, Ethernet switches, field devices and the annual compound growth of 30%

The current industry is not unified communications environment, more competitive industrial Ethernet standard and traditional field bus standard, a lot of solutions using ASIC, ASSP and MCU to achieve. Such hardware is not very flexible, we need to support each user to change the hardware and the corresponding protocol stack software

Currently, there are several open standards for industrial Ethernet protocols, including EtherCAT, Ethernet IP, Modbus / TCP, PROFINET, Ethernet POWERLINK and SERCOS III. These protocols use a single hardware design can be realized in the FPGA, so that engineers can support multiple protocols in a standard hardware platform standardization

Industrial Ethernet solution supports a common platform, thus promoting the integration of office and factory, in the bottom of the controller and the link between plant management, real-time information sharing to achieve rapid response. Also available through the Intranet to connect the internal workshop, workshop and office and between the workshop between the real-time and non real-time systems, field bus protocol and the corresponding backward compatible to support new systems and old systems platform for action.

Open protocol standards simplifies the implementation and network communications equipment to help plant the transition from the field bus to a single multi-layer Ethernet, support a variety of commercial equipment and cables, even if industrial Ethernet protocol has changed, it can be reused The equipment and cables.

Industrial Ethernet protocol architecture can be divided into three categories (Figure 2): A class, B class and C class of protocol standards. A class using a standard Ethernet TCP / IP, primarily for non-real-time information-level applications such as factory automation, speed sensors and display PLC HMI applications. The typical response time is about 100ms or so, or longer. EtherNet / IP, Modbus / TCP and PROFINET CBA is common in this type of Ethernet protocol. B class uses standard Ethernet hardware, custom software stack on top of and provide appropriate real-time performance, response time less than 10ms. Class B for low-precision motor control and remote I / O communications applications involving the Ethernet Powerlink and PROFINET RT and other agreements. C class in the MAC layer using the improved hardware, ON-Semiconductor also determined using custom software to achieve fast real-time performance, generally less than 1ms, applied to the device level of precision motion control applications. EtherCAT, PROFINET IRT and SERCOS III C class industrial Ethernet protocols are examples. C class architecture standard network traffic bandwidth is less than A class architecture. Industrial Ethernet to support all three types of architecture, needs to have a comprehensive configurable platform capabilities, can also change the hardware and software