A Distributed Instrument for Performance Analysis of Real-Time Ethernet Networks

Ethernet technology is widely used in real-time industrial automation. Thanks to real-time Ethernet (RTE) protocols, defined in IEC61784-2 standard, new top-performance automation solutions can be created. Such systems may have communication cycle time down to tens of mus and cycle jitter less than 1 mus, making network testing and debugging very critical. Existing network and protocol analyzers can perform detailed local analysis, but characterization of high-performance RTE systems requires measurement of transmission delays and these instruments cannot be adequately synchronized among them to realize a distributed measurement network. This paper introduces a new low-cost distributed measurement instrument to measure timing characteristics of RTE nodes (end-to-end delays, synchronization, etc.). The proposed instrument has multiple FPGA-based probes that allow for simultaneous/synchronized logging on different place of the target RTE network. A PC-based "monitor station" stores all the data, ready for further elaboration. Architecture details are discussed, a prototype has been realized, and some experimental results are presented. For instance, synchronization accuracy between probes is below 100 ns.