1 Gigabit Industrial Ethernet Field Network Delivers Determinism and Accommodates 10/100/1000 Mb TCP/IP Field Devices

Overview:

The continuing drive to improve productivity will encourage more automation networking. The driving factors behind this expected growth include lean working, increased traceability legislation, product lifecycle management production (PLM), and improvements in manufacturing cycle times. This requires connecting the factory floor to the corporate offices where enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems make information available backwards into the supply chain, as well as forward to customers. Simply put, everyone wants to see what's happening. As a result, networks and the information they handle are becoming as important as the industrial control functions they manage.

This white paper describes the open CC-Link IE Field network, an Industrial Ethernet technology, which operates at 1 Gigabit/sec. This data rate is 10 times faster than other Industrial Ethernet technologies in order to provide highly responsive control system communications, while at the same time allowing connection to field devices (RFID readers, vision systems, etc.) that have TCP/IP Ethernet ports communicating at slower 10Mb or 100Mb data rates.