Interworking between independent PROFIBUSes through ATM networks

Field buses have been developed to fulfil real-time requirements of applications related to factory automation. However, they can only cover geographical areas such as factory halls or buildings which causes the occurrence of many small segments in larger environments unable to communicate among each other. In order to reduce this drawback a possible solution is to connect those field bus segments using interworking devices and a backbone network. A suitable backbone could be an ATM network. An interworking concept based on PROFIBUS/ATM bridges is presented in this paper. Simulations of an example PROFIBUS system were performed in order to study overall system behavior, to evaluate the feasibility of the presented concept and to show its limitations concerning the range of PROFIBUS applications it is suited for.