An IEC 61499 Replication for Distributed Control Applications

Modern industrial environment control programs are distributed among several devices. The IEC 61499 standard defines function blocks with which distributed control applications may be developed, and how these are interpreted and executed. Its functionality and the inherent support for dynamic reconfiguration provide the required infrastructure for Industry 4.0 and industrial IoT applications. However, by their distributed nature new challenges are posed, especially about how modes of failure are handled. To avoid system malfunctions and breakdowns due to partial failures, the authors propose a new framework were the concept of replication can be applied maintaining internal state synchronised. This paper presents an example of how the replication framework on the FORTE IEC 6499 execution platform can be developed and voting strategies, along with the results obtained in the implementation with the standard communication SIFBs available on the Eclipse 4diac™.