Improving industrial communications using reconfigurable devices

Fieldbuses constitute an extended solution used for communication systems and sensors in industrial applications. Nowadays there are a lot of commercial fielbuses provided by different manufacturers making difficult the compatibility between them. As a consequence, the hardware interface must be changed when several equipments of different manufacturers are combined. In order to reduce the cost of integrating different fieldbuse platforms, we propose the use of reconfigurable hardware. By this way the hardware can be dynamically reconfigured according to the software protocol required by each fieldbus. This proposal has been validated by the implementation of a WorldFIP fieldbus interface in the FPGA FLEX 10K20RC240 -4 of Altera. This paper provides a brief description of the characteristics of the WorldWIP fieldbus, and analyses the implementation results.