CONTROL AND COMMUNICATIONS ARCHITECTURE

• US 20080109829A1
• Filed: 09/28/2007
• Published: 05/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/03/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Rockwell Automation, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Rockwell Automation, Inc.)
• Inventors: Neet, Kyle E., Baczkowski, Gary W., Kenst, James W.
• Granted Patent: US 8,458,350 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/328
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks

Abstract

An industrial automation system is provided. The system includes a link layer that includes one or more ports that can communicate via one or more communication protocols. An application layer communicates with one or more network objects and a core layer bridges the application layer and the link layer.

Claims

1. An industrial automation system, comprising:

a link layer that includes one or more ports that communicates via one or more communication protocols;

an application layer that communicates with one or more application components; and

a core layer to bridge the application layer and the link layer.

2. The system of claim 1, the communications protocols include industrial protocols, network protocols, backplane protocols, serial protocols, and wireless protocols.

3. The system of claim 1, the industrial protocols are associated with the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP).

4. The system of claim 1, the application layer includes one or more CIP application objects.

5. The system of claim 1, the core layers includes a message router services component, a transport component, or a connection manager.

6. The system of claim 1, the ports include an unconnected message manager (UCMM), at least one producer component, at least one consumer component, or a data link driver component.

7. The system of claim 1, the application layer is associated with a web application or an OLE for Process Control Data Exchange (OPC-DX) application.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one interface component to bridge communications between applications and ports.

9. The system of claim 8, the interface component includes a message router services, a connection manager, an unconnected message target, a communications port, or an application connection component.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising a message server component to send and receive messages.

11. The system of claim 10, the message server component includes message dispatch component, a message target component, or a message registration services component.

12. The system of claim 11, further comprising a component to encapsulate, encode, or decode messages.

13. The system of claim 12, further comprising a component to parse and decode a path field in a service request message.

14. The system of claim 13, further comprising a component to create a response message in view of the service request message.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising a component to decode message response headers that are received from one or more nodes.

16. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or more transport components.

17. The system of claim 16, the transport components include a consumer transport, a producer transport, a client transport, or a server transport.

18. A communications method for an industrial automation environment, comprising:

abstracting a network protocol according to a one to many or same link protocol; and

delivering a network connection data payload to multiple destinations.

19. The method of claim 18, the network protocol is associated with a common industrial protocol (CIP).

20. The method of claim 18, further comprising communicating with multiple ports via one or more application objects.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising communicating data to the multiple ports from a message received from at least one of the application objects.

22. The method of claim 20, further comprising communicating data from at least one of the multiple ports to at least one application object.

23. A communications system for an industrial controller, comprising:

means for communicating with one or more ports that employ one or more communication protocols;

means for communicating with one or more network objects; and

means for bridging multiple communications layers to support messaging between the one or more ports and the one or more network objects.