Testing coexistence of different RTE protocols in the same network

The definition of several real-time Ethernet (RTE) protocols for industry use implies that new automation systems can include more than one technology. In the future different RTE protocols could share the same network infrastructure, raising the problem of coexistence. The paper introduces a new approach to evaluate coexistence of RTE protocols by means of a distributed RTE traffic emulator/logger that can simultaneously inject RTE traffic and measure its effect on existing infrastructure. In order to experimentally show effectiveness of the proposed method, a prototype instrument has been used to evaluate consequences of mixing RTE protocols that use IEEE 1588 for synchronization and RTE protocols based on time division multiple access. Measurements taken with the proposed instrument have uncertainty in the order of 50 ns.