An EtherCAT bus system includes an EtherCAT master, EtherCAT nodes, and an EtherCAT star hub arranged and/or assembled on the same printed circuit board with the EtherCAT master.

Various embodiments of the teachings herein include a control device comprising: a wireless service interface; and a controller. The control device receives a radio signal generated by a device via a suitable radio connection using a further wireless interface and activates the wireless service interface once receiving the radio signal.

An I/O server service interfaces with multiple containerized controller services each implementing the same control routine to control the same portion of the same plant. The I/O server service may provide the same controller inputs to each of the containerized controller services (e.g., representing measurements obtained by field devices and transmitted by the field devices to the I/O server service). Each containerized controller service executes the same control routine to generate a set of controller outputs. The I/O server service receives each set of controller outputs and forwards an “active” set to the appropriate field devices. The I/O server service may utilize a quality-of-service metric to determine which controller outputs and/or I/O channel is “active.” The I/O server service and other services, such as an orchestrator service, may continuously evaluate performance and resource utilization in the control system, and may dynamically activate and deactivate controller services as appropriate.

A building management system includes a communications bus, subordinate devices connected to the communications bus, and a controller connected to the communications bus. The controller includes an active node table including a plurality of nodes, each node representing one of the subordinate devices connected to the communications bus. The controller is configured to monitor the active node table for a newly connected subordinate device, use a set of rules to determine whether the newly connected subordinate device is supported by the controller for performing an identified function in combination with the controller, and, in response to a determination that the newly connected subordinate device is supported, extend the identified function of the controller to the newly connected subordinate device. Extending the identified function includes enabling the newly connected subordinate device to perform the identified function.

One embodiment includes a control device for field devices connected to the control device via a communications network, e.g. a field bus. The control device comprises a wireless service interface (e.g. Wi-Fi interface). The control device is designed to receive a service signal generated by a field device and to activate the wireless service interface in response. Another embodiment includes a method for transmitting data to a control device for controlling field devices connected to the control device via a communications network. A wireless service interface of the control device is activated via a service signal generated by a field device and sent to the control device. After the activation of the wireless service interface, data is transferred from a tool (e.g. engineering tool, commissioning tool) via the wireless service interface.

A resource allocation method for coexistence of multiple line topological industrial wireless networks is provided. It pertains to the coexistence problem of multiple TDMA-based line topological industrial wireless networks, including three parts: lower bound analysis of scheduling delay, allocation algorithm of inter-network resources and allocation algorithm of intra-network resources. The method uses overall scheduling delay and resource utilization ratio as measurement indexes when analyzing the lower bound of delay and designing resource allocation algorithms, and selects a best node combination in each time slot to occupy as many channel resources as possible to improve the resource utilization ratio and reduce the overall scheduling delay.

A smart process control switch can implement a lockdown routine to lockdown its communication ports exclusively for use by devices having known physical addresses, enabling the smart process control switch to prevent new, potentially hostile, devices from communicating with other devices to which the smart process control switch is connected. Further, the smart process control switch can implement an address mapping routine to identify “known pairs” of physical and network addresses for each device communicating via a port of the smart process control switch. Thus, even if a new hostile device is able to spoof a known physical address in an attempt to bypass locked ports, the smart process control switch can detect the hostile device by checking the network address of the hostile device against the expected network address for the “known pair.”

The present disclosure relates to a communication method for a slave device in a master-slave communication structure, including: sending a boot report to the master device at power-up to report that the slave device is booting, wherein the boot report includes identity information for the slave device; receiving a heartbeat message from the master device; and if no heartbeat message is received from the master device for more than a predetermined time, the boot report is continuously sent to the master device at predetermined intervals until a feedback message of successful connection is received from the master device. Further, the present disclosure relates to a communication method for a communication system having a master-slave communication structure, a communication device for a slave device in a master-slave communication structure, and a communication system having a master-slave communication structure.

A system includes a programmable logic control (PLC) module, an input/output (IO) network bus coupled to the PLC module and provided at facets of a mainframe. A first process chamber attached to a first facet of the facets. A chamber interface IO sub-module is attached to the first facet and coupled to the IO network bus and to a process chamber IO controller of the first process chamber. The chamber interface IO sub-module is to: convert interlock relay signals, received via dry contact exchange with the process chamber IO controller, to digital signals; combine the digital signals into network packets adapted for communication using a protocol of the IO network bus; and transmit the network packets to the PLC module over the IO network bus.

I/O network modules connect field devices to a process control network. Each I/O network module includes a set of electrical connectors for connecting a field device to the module and an I/O channel extending from the set of electrical connectors to a network port. The I/O channel includes a conversion circuit that converts between an I/O signal and network-compatible signals. Each I/O channel connected to the process control network through an I/O network module is associated with its own unique network address. This enables controllers and field devices on the process control network to communicate essentially directly with one another through the network.