Dealing with Communication Channels within IEC61499 Component-Based Systems

Traditional approaches for developing automation systems consider system itself hardly can be changed. Current challenges in automation applications include the need of autoreconfiguration in response to process changes or event triggering. In order to face these requirements, new automation methodologies are necessary. Component-based technologies, initially defined for achieving efficient, structured and reusable designs can also be used to achieve adaptation. In this work, an IEC 61499-based framework that uses the concept to deal with reconfiguration issues is presented. The final output of the framework is a distributed system IEC61499 compliant. A new concept, the communication channel, is introduced providing a new abstraction layer to deal with communication between components. The joint use of automation components and communication channels allows defining complex automation systems in an easy way.