Study on Intelligent Communication Module for Programmable Logic Controller

This paper gives a new design for Ethernet/IP Intelligent Communication Modules (EIICM). The new EIICM module not only acts as the network communication module for the PLCs to facilitate the communications between the PLCs and the remote network devices, but also it acts as the CPU of the built-in operation switch to perform the network topology monitoring and maintenance, ICMP Snooping, and switch managing and diagnosing. Furthermore, it acts as an Ethernet/IP and MB/TCP end device to provide implicit and explicit messaging services. In this paper, it focuses on the overall architecture, the functional design and some key techniques of new solution in EIICCM, such as "Structured Message Broker" pattern, "Management-self Adaptable" pattern, and device management method. It has given a new solution for the next generation of Ethernet module for industrial PLC.