EPA-based Open Network Control System

The Ethernet is more and more used in the industrial environments. Because of the non-deterministic protocol of CSMA/CD, Ethernet is thought not to be suitable for the control of real time applications. With the worldwide application and development of Ethernet, its transmission rate is considered sufficiently high enough to estimate that all messages can be received inside a predefined temporal window. Especially, using Ethernet in industrial network will brings a lot of advantages: (1) consistency with the other communication systems installed in the enterprise; (2) employment of the same hardware all over the factory; (3) short cycle-times due to the high transmission speed; (4) large availability of chips implementing the MAC protocol, etc. In this paper, we first analyze the real-time capability of Ethernet and features of traffic for industrial network. Then, we propose some technologies for the design of an Ethernet-based real-time application. Finally, we present an EPA (Ethernet for Plant Automation)-based open network control system.