IEC publishes new industrial fieldbus standards

The new standards therefore include profiles for these Real-Time Ethernet fieldbuses, together with other industry sector network profiles that were not included in the first editions. Furthermore, the new editions have also added profiles for safety-related fieldbuses. Finally, the need for more guidance in the installation of fieldbuses has been addressed by defining basic guidance for the installation of communication networks in industrial premises (IEC 61918) and dedicated parts of the IEC Fieldbus Standards that, for each fieldbus technology, establish which options of the basic guidance apply and which additional guidance shall be used.

Between them, the IEC Fieldbus Standards provide a variety of established protocols that cover a wide range of application requirements, from process control to manufacturing automation. These have been contributed from the industry players in Europe, America, and Asia-Pacific. An industrial manufacturer or machine/process supplier may choose the one that is best suited for the specific needs of the application and the environment in which it is to be implemented. This selection is facilitated by the harmonised terminology and Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)-based structure of the protocol specifications used in the IEC standards.

The 79 IEC publications are broken down into 15 communication profile families:

• FOUNDATION Fieldbus
• CIP
• PROFIBUS PROFINET
• P-NET
• WorldFIP
• INTERBUS
• CC-Link
• HART
• Vnet/IP
• TCnet
• EtherCAT
• Ethernet Powerlink
• EPA
• MODBUS-RTPS
• SERCOS

Commenting on the publication of the new IEC Fieldbus Standards, Secretary of Subcommittee 65C, Industrial Networks, Bernard Dumortier, says: "The IEC Fieldbus Standards have been a challenge for the IEC in that the technology goes across a whole range of technologies traditionally covered by different expert groups. It was the first system type challenge to the previous automation product-centric approach within the IEC technical committee."

The IEC Fieldbus Standards development introduced new system perspectives, new technology and challenged the IEC structure of vertical product-centric technical committees at the time. The IEC Fieldbus Standards have to facilitate connecting multiple devices of different capability and also meet a wide variety of specific application requirements in a wide variety of industries. The result, although not elegant to the standards purist, meets the practical needs of industry and has evolved successfully to incorporate new technologies and new features such as safety.

Lessons learned from development of the IEC Fieldbus Standards are being taken into account for other technologies, including nanotechnologies, environment, energy, safety and security, where system standards may have to meet similar diverse application and industry automation needs while integrating existing controllers, sensors, actuators and transducers product standards.

The series of International Standards and Technical Reports, IEC 61158, Industrial communication networks - Fieldbus specifications, IEC 61784, Industrial communication networks - Profiles and IEC 61918, Industrial communication networks - Installation of communication networks in industrial premises, are broken down into Communication Profile Families as per the bullet points above.