Transparent wireless system for Profibus

20 April 2005 Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT

With all the programming and configuration needed for Profibus PLCs, it is a nice change to have a device that does not need to have any configuration or programming. All these demands are now a thing of the past, claims Integrate & Autom8, local representative for Satel.

An example is a pump station that is 2 km away, that is required to be monitored and controlled via Profibus, can now be done easily by radio communications without the effort of fibre splicing. With the direct connection onto the Profibus line the radio does not need any 'station address' as it is transported to the PLC and therefore no conversion hardware or software is needed.

With the availability of point-point or multipoint networks there are many possibilities. If, in the future, a Profibus node is required to be added to the network, all that is needed is one Satel radio. Since it is 'plug-and-play' there are no extra configuration settings needed. The radios also act as repeaters so it is possible to have 32 devices on each radio. As long as all the slave radios are in range of the master PLC radio, the radios themselves do not need an internal address.

An important question is 'how fast is needed'? If one slave takes about 100 ms to poll with radio modems, 10 slaves take one second. This is close to the reaction time of a human using scada. For instance, if the application is monitoring tank levels, critical response times are normally in the minutes range.

Some areas where Satel and Profibus are being used in the industrial sector include: mining (field conveyors and stacker reclaimers); metal (load cell displays in hot areas); paper manufacture (automatic guided vehicles).

For more information contact Integrate & Autom8, 0861 AUTOM8, [email protected]

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