Blog: Single-pair Ethernet – System adoptions in different scenarios

In opposite to process industries, Industrial Ethernet is the dominant network in factory automation industries. However, this also limits the benefit arguments of SPE, that are valid in process automation industries, to that of smaller footprint, less cable weight, enhanced cable length, increased robustness easier installation and maintenance through one tool environment.

The challenge is now to bring these advantages into existing IP based networks that already enable many of the current data driven business models. The challenges are manifold. Some of the industrial Ethernet standards have no 10Mbit transmission speed in their specs or just started to include.

Several sensor manufacturers - being main drivers in APL for process automation - were already actively aligning their needs within the IO-Link standard starting back in 2007. IO-Link supports parametrization, diagnosis and full integration into “Industrie 4.0” eco-systems. However, transporting IO-Link Frames over 1000m of SPE would transfer the former point-2-point sensor network into a kind of fieldbus. A positioning discussion is required to resolve and avoid confusion. Despite these technical matters, a key question for factory automation is the use cases that would benefit from SPE. Various groups in PI, ODVA and IO-Link currently discuss and evaluate these use cases and potential integration scenarios into the field. The IO-Link Consortium has released a whitepaper with several examples of deployment scenarios (IO-Link Consortium, 2020) picking up some sample installations in the brownfield:

Hilscher participates in several working groups of PI to contribute to the discussions on SPE for PROFINET. We also contribute to the IO-Link working group evaluating the benefits and challenges for a complementary integration of both standards into the field. In IEEE we share the discussions on remaining open topics in the 802.3cg standard and we participate in discussions of the ODVA on SPE topics. Our goal is to help building a migration path to have low-effort integration of SPE into existing systems and to support this with our competence in communication and our products.

References

IO-Link Consortium (2020), Gringauz, Moritz, Lindenthal, Witte, “Concept study Extension of IO-Link for Single Pair Ethernet transmission” (Whitepaper)”