Building hierarchical automation solutions in the IEC 61499 modeling language

The IEC 61499 modeling language pursues a component-based approach with modular building blocks coupled by ports and arranged in a hierarchical manner. However, as in similar approaches, the IEC 61499 language does not define how functional hierarchies of upper- and lower-level functional entities should be built. In this paper, motivated by our previous work, structuring principles for IEC 61499 for purely hierarchical control solutions are presented. We present elementary design guidelines for structuring automation solutions in several hierarchical layers, outline which elements of IEC 61499 to use, and illustrate the approach by an architecture for an example control system.