PLC Communication using PROFINET: Experimental Results and Analysis

PROFINET is the industrial Ethernet standard devised by PROFIBUS International for "Ethernet on the plant floor". PROFINET allows to implement a comprehensive communications solution on Ethernet which includes peer-to-peer communication between controllers, distributed I/O, machine safety, motion control and data acquisition. In this paper an analysis is conducted on the peer-to-peer interlocking performance based on PROFINET specification. Tests were performed to determine the performance of the peer-to-peer communication mechanism, to evaluate the impact of switches on the system, and to measure the impact of data size on peer-to-peer communication performance. The paper summarizes the test results.