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Leveraging IT Technology for industrial controls applications

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It is the author’s opinion that integration of the controls networking  and the IT network is inevitable. It became inevitable the moment the controls industry chose to use Ethernet as the medium with which to communicate data. The controls industry may choose to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern automation era, or it can gracefully embrace the change. Embracing means the controls industry would be able to leverage the myriad rich, existing technologies that have been proven foolproof in the IT world. To be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern communications era would do a terrible injustice to those who have worked diligently to bring it about. This could quite possibly add an entirely new facet to the fieldbus wars, which I hope have not been forgotten.

With that said, the controls world is going to be moving with an industry that has a definite consumer bias, with product development and release cycles of six months or less. In an industry where the average life expectancy of an automotive production line is eight years, it is impossible to expect the networking  in an industrial setting to keep up with modern IT standards. Therefore, we turn our attention to the technologies that have existed the longest, with the most open standards and the very best support. These are the protocols we wish to use and keep, and this article highlights and explains some of these technologies.

This article does not focus on the technical implementations of each piece of technology. Rather, it is assumed the reader will be using packaged solutions such as a function block for a PLC. These packages typically require only that the user specifies the relevant server to connect to, the data to be gathered and an activation bit. The particulars of each protocol and concept are, ideally, transparent to the user, and therefore it is not pressing that the user understands what is contained in each packet passed between the server and the client. As each protocol described in this article is openly documented and supported, a simple search on the Internet for the technical details will likely yield the relevant automation details.

refer to:
http://www.automation.com/leveraging-it-technology-for-industrial-controls-applications

Next generation in-vehicle wireless technologies

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To integrate next-generation in-vehicle wireless technologies, the car of the future must leverage combination radios. Therefore, it is essential to implement a single in-vehicle chip that can enable all of these connectivity functions in the vehicle. By building in-vehicle multiple complementary radio technologies into a single piece of silicon, designers can solve some of the most difficult design challenges facing systems engineers using in-vehicle wireless communications protocols in their products. One example of such a product is Marvell’s Avastar 88W8787 (Figure 1), an IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n 1×1 + Bluetooth 3.0 + FM wireless SoC that is widely adopted in smartphones, tablets, mobile routers, portable gaming, cameras, and other consumer electronic products. The device is also qualified to meet the stringent quality and reliability requirements for automotive applications, and is thus well-suited for today’s IVI systems.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/wireless-accelerate-next-wave-in-vehicle-innovation/