Latest Trend of Industrial Real-Time Ethernet for the SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference 2006 (SICE-ICCAS 2006)

In recent years, the technology called "industrial Ethernet" in consideration of the problems such as real-time and high reliability is developed to apply the lower price and higher speed Ethernet technologies to the controller networks in the measurement and control systems. At present, in IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), the standardization working of "real-time Ethernet (RTE)" is progressed. Compared with existing Industrial Ethernet, it is a remarkable feature that RTE has the mechanism which synchronizes the timing between each node, and enables deterministic communication (synchronization accuracy between each node is defined in the specifications). In this paper, we update the latest information on the RTE international standardization, and introduce the performance indicators defined by the standard. Furthermore, we explain the technical trend regarding time synchronization and high availability by redundancy, and then we introduce the outline regarding the RTE specifications. Recently it is important that the specification which might become "De-facto Standard" is internationally standardized and turns into "De-jure Standard" promptly. It will also become very important to watch the trend of international standardization in the future, in order to research the trend of the latest technology