The Ethernet has been widely applied in the office environment. In consideration of the requirement of industrial environment, the industrial Ethernet emerged to accelerate network environment constitution of factory automation and promote the implementation of Industry 4.0. This article will briefly introduce the development of industrial Ethernet and solutions launched by ADI for industry Ethernet.
Develop application layer protocol to implement industrial Ethernet
For decades, the standard IEEE 802.3 Ethernet has always acted as the standard network configuration of workstations, network switches, modems, routers and consumer electronics (like PC and Mac). However, it has never been designed for industrial automation indeed. For example, it depended on CSMA/CD media access control method initially and did its best to process network traffic and use the same wire to transfer many different types of traffic, leading to the defects like relatively loud noise and lack of determinism on the whole etc. These defects made the Ethernet difficult to become the alternative solution deployed in digital fieldbuses in automation and control system.
The method for solving the problems above is to develop Ethernet application layer protocol, such as PROFINET®, EtherNet/IP®, EtherCAT® and other protocols operated on Ethernet network. Meanwhile, using their own special mechanisms can guarantee the determinism for time-sensitive data. Some protocols (including PROFINET) are fully compatible with standard TCP/IP stack and can support a real-time channel alongside it.
While implementing protocols like EtherNet/IP, it is able to use ordinary switches and other standard Ethernet infrastructures, which contributes to facility cost control. EtherCAT introduces the principle of pass-through reading (or on the fly processing) which eliminates single node targeting and makes the best use of bandwidth.
The emphasis of the industrial Ethernet is to provide determinism for demanding applications, like motion control and safety, both of which can benefit from the reliability and additional bandwidth brought by Ethernet solutions. In ordinary TCP/IP stacks, the cycle time is usually 100 milliseconds or longer while that of the applications benefiting from the industrial Ethernet will be far below this threshold or even shorter than 1 millisecond.
Communication infrastructure is the backbone of networking factories, which will bring lots of key opportunities on the path to Industry 4.0. Along with the network shift from legacy fieldbus to industrial Ethernet, there will be multiple challenges in designing and implementation phases. Developing a robust, scalable industrial Ethernet solution supporting various protocols and facing the future is a time-consuming task. It needs to be based on skillsets and knowledge bases to scalable the system that guarantees data integration, synchronization and interoperability.
ADI provides Chronous™ industrial Ethernet connectivity solutions
In order to assist customers to accelerate the development of industrial Ethernet products, ADI launches a series of Chronous™ leading portfolio of edge-to-enterprise Ethernet connectivity solutions, specially designed for accelerating the implementation of Industry 4.0. ADI Chronous™ industrial Ethernet product suite includes technology, solutions, software and security functions, which aims to connect the real world to factory network and then to the Cloud.
ADI Chronous™ product mix aims to support scalable and flexible system development, which provides the bandwidth with multi-port count, low-power consumption and flexibility. ADI Chronous solution applies to demanding time-critical environment and opens the door for implementing time-sensitive networks. These solutions also include a series of advanced industrial Ethernet technologies from real-time Ethernet switches, physical layer (PHY) transceivers and protocol processing to complete network interface products. This article will first introduce two kinds of industrial Ethernet PHY transceivers, ADIN1300 and ADIN1200, launched by ADI for you.
The ADIN1300 is a kind of low-power consumption, single-port and gigabit Ethernet transceiver with the characteristic of low latency while the ADIN1200 is the Ethernet transceiver supporting 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps. Both designs integrate high energy efficiency Ethernet (EEE) PHY core and all associated common analog circuit, input and output clock buffering, management interface, subsystem register, MAC interface and control logic for the implementation of management reset, clock control and pin configuration.The ADIN1300 adopts compact 6 mm × 6 mm and 40 lead frame chip scale package (LFCSP). While using 3.3 V MAC interface power, this device can at least use 2 power supplies (0.9V and 3.3V). The ADIN1200 adopts 5 mm × 5 mm and 32 lead frame chip scale package (LFCSP), which uses 3.3 V MAC interface power and adopts 3.3V single power supply.
In order to achieve the maximum system level design flexibility, both products can use single VDDIO power to configure management data input/output (MDIO) and MAC interface supply voltage, which is independent of other circuits on the ADIN1300/ADIN1200 and allows the operation under 1.8 V, 2.5 V or 3.3 V. While powering on, the ADIN1300/ADIN1200 keeps hardware reset mode until each power source exceeds its minimum rising threshold value. Through monitoring the power supply, it is able to detect whether one or multiple supply voltage is lower than the minimum falling threshold and make the device keep hardware reset mode until the power recovers and satisfy the requirement of power-on reset (POR) circuits and thus provide power down protection.
MII management interface (also known as MDIO interface) of ADIN1300/ADIN1200 provides two-wire system serial interface in the host processor or between MAC and the ADIN1300/ADIN1200 in order to visit control and status information in PHY core management registers. This interface is compatible with the Clause 22 and Clause 45 management frame structures in IEEE 802.3 Standard. ADIN1300 supports 150-meter cable at gigabit speed and the ADIN1300/ADIN1200 supports 180-meter cable while operating at the speed of 100 Mbps or 10 Mbps.
The ADIN1300 is compliant with 10BASE-Te/100BASE-TX/1000BASE-T IEEE® 802.3™ while ADIN1200 is compliant with 10BASE-Te/100BASE-TX IEEE® 802.3™, both of which have MII, RMII and RGMII MAC interface. The latency transmit of 1000BASE-T RGMII in ADIN1300 is shorter than 68 ns and receive is shorter than 226 ns. The latency transmit of 100BASE-TX MII is shorter than 52 ns and receive is shorter than 248 ns. The latency transmit of 100BASE-TX RGMII in ADIN1200 is shorter than 124 ns and receive is shorter than 250 ns. The latency transmit of 100BASE-TX MII is shorter than 52 ns and receive is shorter than 248 ns.
The ADIN1300/ADIN1200 accords with multiple EMC testing standards and adopts multilevel pin strapping unmanaged configuration. EEE accords with IEEE 802.3az Standard, of which the initial testing of the data package supports IEEE 1588 time stamp, supports enhanced link detection, configurable LED and crystal frequency/25 MHz clock input frequency (50 MHz for RMII) as well as provides 25 MHz/125 MHz synchronous clock output.
The ADIN1300/ADIN1200 adopts LFCSP small-scale package and -40 to +105 wide temperature range. The ADIN1300 has the low-power consumption of 330 mW (1000BASE-T) and 140 mW (100BASE-TX) while the ADIN1200 has that of 139 mW (100BASE-TX). Both support 3.3 V/2.5 V/1.8 V MAC interface and VDDIO supply voltage as well as integrated power monitoring and POR.
ADI also launches EVAL-ADIN1300FMCZ evaluation kit matching ADIN1300 and EVAL-ADIN1200FMCZ evaluation kit matching the ADIN1200, allowing simplified evaluation of key characteristics of the ADIN1300/ADIN1200. Both evaluation kits use a single external 5V power supply and the power of all chips is adjusted by this 5V power supply rail.
Both evaluation kits can provide P3 field programmable gate array (FPGA) and flexible mezzanine connector (FMC) used for connecting the master FPGA system to conduct MAC interface and MDIO control, FMC connector used for MII interface, MDIO signal and status signal, as well as operable surface-mounted configuration resistors and dial switch, using a single external 5V power supply.
