In this article, we are going to talk about industrial communication protocols. Indeed, in the industrial world there are many communication protocols allowing various industrial equipments to communicate. However, what exactly is a protocol? To put it simply, a protocol is a set of pre-established rules that govern communication between one or more equipment / services.
When two or more industrial equipments communicate, the protocols specify what types of data can be sent, how each type of message will be identified what actions can or should be taken by the participants in the conversation etc.
Thus, for two devices to be able to communicate with each other, they must both be compatible with the protocol used to perform the exchanges; for example, for a PLC and a display to be able to communicate via the modbus protocol, they must both be compatible with the modbus protocol.
In the industrial world, there are several communication protocols by which we can cite:
– Modbus ASCII
– Modbus RTU
– Modbus TCP/IP
– Profibus DP
– CAN
– Profinet
– EtherNet/IP
– Ethercat
– CC-Link
– Powerlink
– BACnet/IP
– DeviceNet
– CANopen
– ControlNet
– BACnet MS/TP
Etc..
