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COMMUNICATIONS

MASER has two lines of technological innovation in this field: RF communications and PLC communications

Industrial format communication networks have mushroomed over the last decade, chiefly stimulated by their application to the production lines of car factories, with the main hardware being RS485 and the logic standards: Profibus, Modbus, Profinet, etc. and in automation and on-board bus environments: Domo net and Can Bus.

There has been a notable migration from office applications to industrial applications over the decade and a signification implementation has been seen of the Ethernet standard in industrial applications, thus unifying two areas of activity under this standard: Management and Production. The challenge now before us is the optimisation of the protocols, so that they are more rapid, robust, flexible and self-governing.

MASER has two lines of technological innovation in this field: RF communications and PLC communications. Both formats will mean an important step forward in the coming years as regards industrial communications.

RF COMMUNICATIONS

Based on the ZIg Bee standard, communication routes are established automatically and adaptively, creating mesh-type self-organised networks. It is supported by the communications standard 802.15.4, which uses a link via radio frequency on the free 2.4 GHz band, meaning that it is not necessary to pay licences. Up to 16 channels are available and it allows transfer speeds of around 250Kbps. It is conceived for the communication of small data packages and applications with a high level of energy efficiency. At present, MASER is carrying out trials on the prototypes developed in its XXX department for a water management network and it will shortly begin trials in collaboration with CIEMAT on the Almería solar platform.

PLC COMMUNICATIONS

Power Line Communications technology makes voice and data transmission possible via an electric line of up to 50 Km with a data transfer speed of 100 Kps, with the ability to operate within a temperature range of between -40 and +85 ºC. Over the last year, the XXX department of MASER has developed an application for the communication of up to 1000 refrigerated containers in logistics ports. At present, this application is being tested in a logistics port in Vigo. Its application in solar fields in the USA has already become reality.

2009-11-12