Beckhoff: Ethernet-APL – A New Communication Standard for the Process Industry
As digitalization continues in the process industry, the volumes of data provided by intelligent sensors and actuators are also growing. For a long time, however, there was no communication standard to transmit this data quickly and across multiple levels of the automation structure. Certain properties have to be present for use in process industry plants, such as the ability to connect field devices over long distances and the ensuring of explosion protection. Thus, to meet these requirements, process industry organizations and companies have developed the Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (Ethernet-APL). This new communication technology is based on the 10BASE-T1L Ethernet standard, which allows a maximum cable length of 1000 meters and a transmission rate of 10 Mbit/s. Power supply limits in all zones throughout the hazardous area are defined by IEC specification 60079-47 (2-WISE). Power and data are transmitted over the same pair of wires (single pair Ethernet) with Ethernet-APL.
