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Diplomarbeit 2004 (DA04): Arbeits-Archiv
 
DA Sln 04/1 - ETHERNET Powerlink - ASi Gateway
Studierende: David Buchi, buechdav
  Christian Wettstein, wettsch1

Betreuer: Hans Scheitlin, seil

The far spread Ethernet is increasingly used in the area of industrial communication. But it cannot meet all the necessary requirements of automation technology. Therefore, real time protocols based on Ethernet acquire a considerable importance. Ethernet Powerlink is such a protocol and exhibits the demanded, strictly deterministic behavior. However, Ethernet is only suitable if just little user data is transferred. It exists another network system designed for this appliance: The Actuator-Sensor-Interface (ASi) offers an alternative for the lowest level of the automation hierarchy on which only few bits have to be transferred.

This work tried to realize a gateway which connects a Powerlink network with the AS-Interface. This enables an end-to-end communication from the central control down to the most outer sensors. The required hardware for the project was provided by the customer with a running ASi-controller. In order to get the gateway function, the Ethernet Powerlink stack should be ported to the given hardware.

At the end, the Gateway was successfully realized. It makes it possible to send data from an Ethernet Powerlink device to ASi-actuators, as well as to read data from ASi-sensors. The produced demo application proves that the end-to-end communication works in both direc-tions. The Gateway is a fully functional Powerlink device even though the typical Powerlink timing limitations are not achieved completely. This is caused by the pre-determined operating system that makes machine-intimate implementation impossible.

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