A Study on Industrial Communication Networking: Ethernet Based Implementation

Recent enhancement of the industrial communications and networking are possible to apply in Ethernet networks system at all levels of industrial automation, especially in the controller level whereby the data exchanges in real-time communication is mandatory. This paper is about a study on the development of industrial communications network based on the Ethernet protocol and thus implement it into Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system. The purpose of this paper is to overcome real-time communication in which the accessibility of data exchange is very difficult in terms of retrieving data from other stations and time consuming. The Ethernet module is installed onto supervisory OMRON PLC to integrate several of stations in the CIM-70A system which is located at Robotic Laboratory in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). The workability of this communication technique is analyzed and compared with the conventional serial communication which widely used in automation networking systems. It is found that, the Ethernet protocol approach through the communication and integration of CIM system can be accessed easily and available to be upgraded at the management and enterprise levels of industrial automation system.