MODERN FIELDBUS COMMUNICATION ARCHITECTURES FOR REAL-TIME INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS

In this paper we present the latest developments in the field of industrial networking. Within Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Engineering (CIME) environments there is a lot of experience on information systems and manufacturing technologies. The use of this heterogeneous environment often results in long lead times and excessive infrastructure and integration costs. In order to minimize the effects of these heterogeneous environments, systems and methods are developed and applied, making the architectures of the industrial automation systems more ''open''. In this paper we will focus on the low-level industrial communication system architectures (fieldbusses). This communication system is regarded as the factory's ''nervous system'' linking various centers of production activity and allowing flexible and reliable coordination among them. The performance of these communication systems depends strongly on the quality of the MAC-layer protocols (according to the OSI Reference Model). Therefore, selective simulation results are presented for a new high-performance hybrid MAC-layer protocol which is designed especially for hard real-time industrial applications.