The Wireless Gateway Design of the Industrial Ethernet EtherCAT Network
Han Wei-guang · Modular Machine Tool & Automatic Manufacturing Technique · 2013
The Real-time Ethernet technology is a hot issue in the industrial communication area,and the EtherCAT technology has a bright prospect in such field.The w ireless sensor netw ork ZigBee technology can bring forth the convenience of the transmission channel on the deployment and planning,w hich can reduce many costs and troubles of the netw ork cabling construction.Making a gatew ay w hich connects the EtherCAT netw ork w ith the ZigBee netw ork can expand the range of the industrial communication netw orks.In this w ay,the EtherCAT master can achieve a perception of the change in the industrial manufacturing environment.On the basis of further study on these tw o protocols,an implementation scheme of ZigBee accessing EtherCAT is proposed,and a communication model of an EtherCAT-ZigBee gatew ay is designed,and the gatew ay w hich connects the EtherCAT netw ork and the ZigBee netw ork is designed and realized through using ARM Cortex-A8 and CC2530.After tests,it show s that the EtherCAT netw ork and the ZigBee netw ork can communicate w ith each other through the gatew ay,w hich is able to meet the needs of real-time collection of field data.