An innovative architecture for industrial controller

The authors describe an innovative architecture for industrial controller design. The design alleviates the shortcomings of slow communication, poor resolution, and separate digital and analog input/output (I/O) boards commonly found in the currently available controllers. There are dual processors in the board, one processor for communication and the main processor for executing the control program. A piggyback analog I/O module can be installed on the digital I/O board. The controller board design reduces the communication interface overhead, accommodates various communication protocols, and offers an efficient way of integrating analog and digital I/O functions.<>