Ethernet technology is widely used in real-time industrial automation. Thanks to real-time Ethernet (RTE) protocols, defined in IEC61784-2 standard, new top-performance automation solutions can be created. Such systems may have communication cycle time down to tens of us and cycle jitter less than 1 us, making network testing and debugging very critical. Existing network and protocol analyzers can perform detailed local analysis, but characterization of high-performance RTE systems requires measurement of transmission delays and these instruments cannot be adequately synchronized among them to realize a distributed measurement network. This paper introduces a new low-cost distributed measurement instrument to measure timing characteristics of RTE nodes (end-to-end delays, synchronization, etc.). The proposed instrument has multiple FPGA-based probes that allow for simultaneous/ synchronized logging on different place of the target RTE network. A PC-based "monitor station" stores all the data, ready for further elaboration. Architecture details are discussed, a prototype has been realized, and some experimental results are presented. For instance, synchronization accuracy between probes is below 100 ns.

A Distributed Instrument for Performance Analysis of Real-Time Ethernet Networks

FERRARI, Paolo;FLAMMINI, Alessandra;MARIOLI, Daniele;TARONI, Andrea
2008-01-01

Abstract

Ethernet technology is widely used in real-time industrial automation. Thanks to real-time Ethernet (RTE) protocols, defined in IEC61784-2 standard, new top-performance automation solutions can be created. Such systems may have communication cycle time down to tens of us and cycle jitter less than 1 us, making network testing and debugging very critical. Existing network and protocol analyzers can perform detailed local analysis, but characterization of high-performance RTE systems requires measurement of transmission delays and these instruments cannot be adequately synchronized among them to realize a distributed measurement network. This paper introduces a new low-cost distributed measurement instrument to measure timing characteristics of RTE nodes (end-to-end delays, synchronization, etc.). The proposed instrument has multiple FPGA-based probes that allow for simultaneous/ synchronized logging on different place of the target RTE network. A PC-based "monitor station" stores all the data, ready for further elaboration. Architecture details are discussed, a prototype has been realized, and some experimental results are presented. For instance, synchronization accuracy between probes is below 100 ns.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11379/29490
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