Evaluation of the Communication Load of a Real-Time Fieldbus Using Concepts of Periodical Communication

To implement and design an application of a real time fieldbus segment, engineers are obliged to estimate the communication load factor of the communication to secure the operation. According to the recent increase of the node number per segment, communication load management becomes a real issue. This paper gives the definition of the communication load and the procedure to estimate and measure the communication load of a real time fieldbus: FOUNDATION TM fieldbus and thus establish the theoretical and experimental base of the guidance to keep the periodi- cal/stationary communication load less than 70%.