Real-time Ethernet in the Automation

Ethernet-based communicaton becomes more important within industrial applications. But is a time
-critical data process with the widely used Windows possible?

Ethernet-based communication is dominating many industrial applications - the standard mechanisms of the operating systems are however imprecise, real-time capable mechanisms are required. Using the »RealTime Suite« by Kithara, industrial-communication tasks over Ethernet-based protocols (including IP and so the widely used protocols TCP and UDP) can now be implemented in real-time.

Besides high-precision timers with multitasking, the real-time ex-tension also includes functions to communicate over Ethernet controllers in real-time. The data communication up to Gigabit speed is processed Ethernet controllers by Intel and Realtek. This allows to implement fast measurement acquisition or industrial image processing, e.g. with GigE Vision. Furthermore, TCP and UDP are provided with real-time characteristics.

The network controllers are accessed directly using specific real-time drivers, in which any copy operations are avoided. Thereby highest possible transfer rates and shortest response times are reached. In addition, functions for the CRC calculation and byte-order conversion are provided.

As usual with Kithara the socket application can be programmed comfortably within the application in C/C++ or Delphi. C# is supported as well in form of an embedded DLL.