In order to keep pace with technological advancements off-highway and mobile industry constantly invest heavily in research and development projects. These projects vary from electronics to mechanics to offer a greater customer experience, performance, safety and much more. Communication plays a vital role in vehicles and currently these industries are in search of a next generation fieldbus satisfying all industry requirements along with providing an enhanced performance.

In today’s age of data and information, it is of prime importance to not only exchange data but also to do it safely and securely. CANopen is widely used in automotive, off highway and mobile machinery for exchanging information. Over the years, the amount of data exchanged has increased exponentially and, in the future, will continue to grow. With the addition of sensors, IOs, and cameras the bandwidth requirements have escalated.

Camera integration on a vehicle was unthinkable a couple of year back. As a feature available in the vehicle in the minds of the users it has moved from a ‘good to have’ to a ‘must have’ feature. CANopen being based on serial communication limits in these bandwidth requirements. Consequently, exhausting all the available resources, the industry is in search of the next generation fieldbus, which provides a common backbone for all communication.

With the size of electronics reducing day-by-day and vehicle light-weighting gaining prominence, if the number of interfaces keep on increasing, the vehicle will not be able to keep pace with industry demands. Modular, flexible manufacturing solutions are more important than ever – and easier than ever to implement, thanks to technologies like OPC UA and OPC UA over TSN. Stefan Bina, Networking specialist, B&R Industrial Automation, answers frequently asked questions on the topics of performance, cybersecurity, migration and how TSN works in combination with existing fieldbus systems.

What kind of performance can I expect from OPC UA over TSN?
The technology is capable of addressing more than 10,000 network nodes, scalable from 10 megabits to 10 gigabits and beyond. Testing conducted by B&R achieved cycle times below 50 microseconds with a jitter of less than ±100 nanoseconds in a network of 200 remote I/O bus couplers totaling 10,000 I/O points. This is consistent with claims that OPC UA over TSN is “18 times faster than today's fastest solution”. This level of performance makes proprietary fieldbus networks obsolete. OPC UA over TSN allows high-performance motion control traffic and bandwidth-intensive IT traffic on a single cable without interference between them.

Will OPC UA over TSN help integrate factory and machine networks with our IT requirements?
OPC UA was designed to communicate with IT systems. OPC UA over TSN will enable you to converge OT and IT networks without disturbing machine operations. This is thanks to TSN and the use of OPC UA security mechanisms familiar to IT departments today, including user authentication and authorisation, encryption and certificate handling.

Can TSN and non-TSN OPC UA or normal IP devices be used in the same network?
Yes, because TSN is an evolution of standard Ethernet. TSN simply enhances standard Ethernet with real-time capabilities, so it is possible to have standard Ethernet devices and TSN devices present in the same network. Standard Ethernet devices would not need any interface or gateway to connect to a TSN network. However, only TSN-capable devices will be able to communicate in real time.

Will it be possible to synchronise POWERLINK and OPC UA over TSN?
Yes, it will be possible to synchronise POWERLINK and OPC UA over TSN devices in B&R systems.

What about running existing fieldbus protocols – such as EtherNet/IP, Profinet, EtherCAT, EtherCAT G or CC-Link IE – over TSN?
The legacy fieldbus protocols would share a common TSN network, but the devices would not be interoperable as OPC UA devices would be. These protocols also lack the semantics and methods that OPC UA provides. OPC UA has built-in security and is recognised an international standard for communication from sensor to cloud with new developments being added all the time. The key difference is system interoperability: without it, you are locked into one vendor and one automation solution, with no ability to English communicate or synchronise with other systems. In a multi-vendor plant, this means you are unable to secure your communication and implement advanced functionality such as condition monitoring, line balancing, predictive maintenance, machine optimisation and plug-and-produce startup and maintenance. As a machine builder, this means you are limited to the level of innovation offered by your chosen vendor.