Download Development of a Universal EtherCAT-Based fieldbus

AALTO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
ABSTRACT OF THE
MASTER’S THESIS
Author: Jonas Nyberg
Title: Development of a Universal EtherCAT-Based Fieldbus Module
Date: 27.5.2013
Language: English
Number of pages:10+47
Department of Electronics
Professorship: Electronics and applications
Code: S3007
Supervisor: Prof. Raimo Sepponen
Instructor: Ari Lindvall
A product development project was set up at the Finnish company SKS Control Oy in
order to renew an older product portfolio consisting of a number of different devices
used in electrically implemented motion control systems. These products include, for
example, a range of programmable CPU units, display devices, HMIs, and I/O
devices. This work focuses on the process of developing one of the new products,
which is an EtherCAT-based fieldbus module. The purpose of this product is to
replace a number of older products by integrating their functionality into one
extensive modular-structured device. Along with this, the new module is intended to
provide various new features that were hard or impossible to implement with the
older products.
The part of the product development work which is presented here consists of three
main parts. The first one presents some of the most relevant theoretical background
behind the field-bus module along with a list of wanted features and properties.
Together with the theory, this part discusses a way of satisfying these design
constraints while using a module structure similar to the other products in the
portfolio.
Second, the work covers the hardware design of the module by dividing it into
smaller functional blocks and discussing them separately. Here the focus lies on the
electronic design rather than the mechanical.
Finally, the work includes a section about the software work included in the product
development. This part mainly focuses on the hardware description language VHDL
and, to a smaller extent, on additional software, such as C, used in the product or
together with it.
Keywords: EtherCAT, FPGA programming, VHDL, XML, C, I/O, PCB design,
product design, field-bus