Runtime-reconfigurable communication concept for real-time measurement and control

In the field of communication between the variant sensor and actuator devices in measurement and instrumentation systems, currently a change of key technologies is underway: The traditional field bus concepts are replaced by state-of-the-art communication systems. Many of these new designs are based on Industrial Ethernet. This paper presents key requirements for an Ethernet-based communication network which is reconfigurable at runtime and provides hard real-time behavior. Based on these requirements an architectural and topological concept is developed and one of the currently leading industrial solutions, EtherCAT, is examined in respect of using it as communication protocol in the proposed system architecture.