The adoption of industrial communication systems in the past year has been impressive in all the fields of applications. Consequently, a clear assessment of their performance represents a key aspect that needs to be adequately investigated. Indeed, several accurate contributions have already appeared in the scientific literature. Most of them are focused on protocol analysis, providing results mainly derived from theoretical models as well as numerical simulations. However, only a few of these contributions are concerned with practical measurements obtained either from real application contexts or, at least, from prototype configuration test beds. The reasons behind this lack of practical results are manifold. Basically, the execution of experimental measurements is a demanding task that requires strong efforts and competencies in terms of both personnel and instrumentation as well as relevant time availability. Moreover, experimental measurement sessions on real plants often cannot take place because of the unavailability of the plants themselves since they are mostly dedicated to production activities. The analysis carried out in this article, along with the proposed examples, highlights that the practical (actually measured) performance figures of industrial communication systems are often worse than those expected, as derived from theoretical/simulative models. The causes of such discrepancies are mainly related to the internal behaviors of the employed components as well as to the features of the environments where the networks are deployed. The issue is of relevant importance since the performance degradation of the plants/machines that employ these networks may lead to a complete review of the production strategy. Although a solution of this problem cannot be given at a glance, there are some activities that, if carefully addressed may provide some useful insights in this direction. This article, actually, deals with most of the aforementioned activities.
Performance of Industrial Communication Systems: Real Application Contexts
S Vitturi;L Seno;F Tramarin
2012
Abstract
The adoption of industrial communication systems in the past year has been impressive in all the fields of applications. Consequently, a clear assessment of their performance represents a key aspect that needs to be adequately investigated. Indeed, several accurate contributions have already appeared in the scientific literature. Most of them are focused on protocol analysis, providing results mainly derived from theoretical models as well as numerical simulations. However, only a few of these contributions are concerned with practical measurements obtained either from real application contexts or, at least, from prototype configuration test beds. The reasons behind this lack of practical results are manifold. Basically, the execution of experimental measurements is a demanding task that requires strong efforts and competencies in terms of both personnel and instrumentation as well as relevant time availability. Moreover, experimental measurement sessions on real plants often cannot take place because of the unavailability of the plants themselves since they are mostly dedicated to production activities. The analysis carried out in this article, along with the proposed examples, highlights that the practical (actually measured) performance figures of industrial communication systems are often worse than those expected, as derived from theoretical/simulative models. The causes of such discrepancies are mainly related to the internal behaviors of the employed components as well as to the features of the environments where the networks are deployed. The issue is of relevant importance since the performance degradation of the plants/machines that employ these networks may lead to a complete review of the production strategy. Although a solution of this problem cannot be given at a glance, there are some activities that, if carefully addressed may provide some useful insights in this direction. This article, actually, deals with most of the aforementioned activities.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
