An architecture for the interconnecting heterogeneous fieldbuses in industrial automation

A wide variety of fieldbuses have been set up in the industrial automation system in different time periods under different environment. Therefore, during the development of industrial automation systems and control applications, the developer has to consider the interconnection of heterogeneous fieldbuses. In the paper, a heterogeneous fieldbuses interconnection architecture (HFIA) is presented to interconnect heterogeneous fieldbuses. With the help of the HFIA, it is easy and fast to interconnect heterogeneous fieldbuses. At the same time, the HFIA can be used for high-level industrial applications to control, monitor and optimize the operations of the fieldbuses systems. Profilbus, CANbus and Ethernet/IP are adopted as case studies for the HFIA architecture.