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Industrial Ethernet
Industrial Ethernet is identified by the following attributes and thereby it differs from the already known Ethernet network in an office environment. It suits industrial needs, which means the robust mechanical construction is stringently necessary to allow the operation within harsh environments. The used protocols must also display robustness. Therefore only convenient IT protocols will be adopted. Some completely new protocols have been developed and will be combined to a total solution. Previous fieldbus protocols are transferred e.g. via tunnelling or also by encapsulation. A more powerful alternative solution is the Proxy concept. However there are numerous Ethernet based fieldbus protocols, which have solutions to remove the disadvantages of Ethernet e.g. determinism and real time capability. Examples are PROFINET, EtherCat or Ethernet/IP. The aim for the application of Industrial Ethernet is the unified network architecture from management, control to field level attached with the simplified access over all levels.
The research area is particularly concerned with topics regarding the further industrial application of the established Ethernet technology in combination with IP (Internet Protocol) based protocols. Besides the performance analysis and validation of systems, the further development of suitable protocols raises unsolved issues for application in an industrial environment because of the world wide networking and the communication via Wide Area Networks (WAN) including public networks. Here a very heterogeneous communication landscape can be found. Because of the process of globalisation, the increasing world wide co-operation of local branches, retroactions regarding the production and the industrial automation can be expected. World wide distributed manufacturing facilities are definitely a trend that can be identified. Therefore production relevant data has to be exchanged among these plants. The communication above local borders of automation domains is a demanding challenge that has to be fulfilled by the future industrial automation. Access to WANs is mostly enabled by special providers and combined with Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Such networks are optimised regarding high bandwidth, and the transfer of isochronous realtime data is restricted or is only conditionally possible.
Current fields of research are:
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