Research And Realization Of Interface Between Industrial Ethernet And Configuration Software Based On OPC

Since1960s, computer was introduced into automatic control field. Computer control system has gone through several periods, Direct Digital Control, Distributed Control System, Fieldbus Control System, and Industrial Ethernet. IEC611584th Edition released in December2007includes protocol standard about9types of fieldbus and10types of Industrial Ethernet. In the present, various international standard protocols coexisting, there is no uniform standard for communication among them, resulting in communication difficulties and inconvenience of integration between different systems.This paper first illustrates several popular Industrial Ethernet communication protocols (Modbus/TCP, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, PROFINET), and then introduces OPC technology, and gives details of the OPC technical specifications and development methodology, analyzes emphatically the OPC data access specifications. OPC, an industry standard based on Microsoft OLE, COM and DCOM technology, can solve the above problems.Therefore, this paper designs a communication scheme, which is based on OPC technology and allows communicate among a variety of Industrial Ethernet protocol, and develops the OPC server interface system using Microsoft Visual Studio2008development environment. Take Industrial Ethernet Modbus/TCP for example, this system, as a Modbus/TCP client to access the data of the Modbus/TCP server to provide data to other OPC applications and the OPC data access server to provide data access service, takes Siemens WinCC6.0as OPC client in this paper to test and achieves the normal communication between configuration software WinCC and OPC data access server.Finally, this paper manifests the practical application of the above system, combining to a smart meter company’s engineering example. It is convenient to achieve a variety of system integration of Industrial Ethernet, by adding other Industrial Ethernet protocol analysis module to this OPC server. This paper provided a reference for industrial control applications based on OPC technology.