Fieldbus device description using tag-based trees

Fieldbus systems are generally static configured systems. However, the configuration processes are often complex and would take advantages of technologies providing flexibility, adaptability, etc. Specifically, fieldbus technologies are often incompatible to each other. A technology bringing on the one hand a homogeneous interface between different fieldbusses and, on the other hand providing a simple addressing mechanism and plug-and-play capability could bring advantages to fieldbus systems. Therefore, an alternative data format offering the aforementioned features is presented in this paper. This data format, called tag-based trees, is strongly related to XML and XML DOM trees, and basically provides a generic data format, which is suitable for almost all types of data. Moreover, it also gives the opportunity for fieldbus networks to provide semantics to the system by enriching the data with an appropriate structure describing the meaning of the data. Hence, it is also possible to provide a kind of interpretation instructions to the data consumer.