Model-driven engineering of networked industrial automation systems

The configuration of communication networks is still an extensive part of the engineering process especially within heterogeneous and hybrid networks. Reducing the engineering time by an automatic configuration of the communication networks would not only save time and costs it would also allow the engineer to concentrate more on the design of the automation applications and processes. Therefore this paper offers a concept to describe networked industrial automation systems especially the communication requirements requested by the control application as well as the restrictions given by the hardware equipment. It also presents how to integrate these descriptions within a framework for the calculation of possible communication paths.