An efficient simulation methodology of networked industrial devices

Industrial Ethernet and WLAN have entered strongly into the fields of control and automation. Nowadays, data acquisition products offer many options regarding the networking of there devices using the above techniques. However, the planners and designer who used networked industrial products need to virtually test the performance of their automated or controlled systems prior to its installation. This paper presents a new simulation methodology of networked industrial devices using academic OPNET IT GURU package. This methodology is based on supplying the planners with a simple GUI and ready to use industrial models. In this work, a complete library of national instrument (NI) devices was built. The simulation method was given in details and several examples were demonstrated. A complex real time substation automation system was simulated using a variety of simulated NI devices and the effect of the different parameters (network speed, topology, nodes performance, network stack, etc...) is examined. It was found that this simulation method with its full NI devices library would enhance the planning process and abstract the time required for project building.