Distributed control of an XY board via ethernet

With the recent IPv6, Power over Ethernet (PoE) and robust hardware designs, Switched Ethernet technology is currently reaching the status of a complete fieldbus system for harsh factory floor applications. However, the investors still hesitate on its field level operation for time critical applications, due to the non-deterministic delays in the closed world of a switched network. The objective of this paper is to practically prove an adaptive sampling scheme to handle network delays and to highlight the potential of Switched Ethernet in implementing time critical real-time distributed control system applications. Experiments are carried out on a distributed XY board, in which the speed and position control loops on each axis, are closed through a 100Mbps Switched Ethernet network.