International Cooperations of PNO – EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT) and Wireless Cooperation Team (WCT)

Phil Black - PII Editor 10/06/2008

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For many years, the PNO (the PROFIBUS User Organization) has been tremendously successful in their cooperations with various organisations. The aim of such cooperations is to determine and continuously distribute consistent functionalities and stan-dards.

In April 2007, the EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT) and the FDT Group announced that they are jointly working on a uniform solution for device integration, which is fully compatible with both EDDL and FDT, the two technologies that currently exist on the market. These efforts are being promoted in the project Field Device Integration (FDI).

In the meantime, the use cases have been completed and the requirements have been defined. The validation of these use cases was made in close consultation with NAMUR (the interest group for automation technology of the process industry), the WIB (International Instrument Users” Association) as well as the AIDA (Automation Initiative of German Domestic Automobile Manufacturers). Currently, the architecture and the technical specifications are being developed. A first draft of these specifications will be completed by December 2008; the final technical specifications are to be released by the end of 2009.

The Wireless Cooperation Team (WCT) was founded in August 2007. Within this cooperation, the Fieldbus Foundation, the HART Communication Foundation and the PNO have agreed on an unprecedented and unique cooperation in the area of wireless technology for the manufacturing and process industry. The aim of this cooperation is to establish a common open standard and to promote greater acceptance for wireless technologies.

For process automation, WirelessHARTT technology of the HART Communication Foundation is to be employed in this regard. In a first stage, the specifications for gateways between wireless HART networks and the individual fieldbus systems (FF as well as PROFIBUS and PROFINET) are created. For this purpose, the three organizations have agreed to develop joint guidelines concerning the inclusion into their respective product registration procedures.

For more information contact Bob Squirrell, Chairman, The PROFIBUS Group
92 Chessington Road, West Ewell, Surrey, KT19 9UR
Email: uk@profibus.com
Tel/voice mail: +44 20 8144 9597 Fax: +44 870 141 7378
Skype (VoIP): bobsquirrell