Research on EPA system integration based on FDT

EPA (Ethernet for plant automation) is an industrial Ethernet standard constituted by Chinese. On the basis of studying the system integration methods in EPA system and field device tool (FDT) technology, this paper presents a system integration model based on FDT for EPA system. Then the implementations of EPA communication device type manager (DTM) and device DTM are discussed in detail. Finally, the system integration model mentioned above is verified in FDT framework applications via developing EPA communication DTM and device DTMs. The result shows that EPA intelligent instruments of different manufactures can be integrated into a control system via communication DTM and device DTMs, and they can be maintained and managed in a unified platform. Moreover seamless integration between EPA system and other field bus systems can be achieved according to the solution presented above.