Analysis of control interval for foundation fieldbus-based control systems

Fieldbus-based control systems (FCS) have been increasingly used in process automation. Some processes and dynamic specifications need higher control frequencies to avoid instability. The aim of this paper is to analyze the temporal characteristics of communication and computation tasks and the configuration of the function blocks in a FCS and to allow the control interval to be shortened. An FCS for a water tank process is used as a case study. The experimental results show that the execution time of function blocks and the margin time are dominant over communication delays, and optimizing configuration by reducing the number of external links can contribute to increasing the control frequency.