Hubert Kirrmann ABB Research Center Switzerland & Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

This talk presents the principles of fault-tolerance in industrial networks and the current state of IEC standardization. Industrial Automation systems are distributed computing systems meeting high requirements on real-time response, safety and availability. The latter can be increased by redundant computing and networking elements, the challenge being to respect the real-time and safety requirements dictated by the plant. In particular, the grace time, the time the plant tolerates for reconfiguration and reintegration of components without disruption of production, becomes a dominant factor. Various architectures and ad-hoc solutions exist since years on the market. In the scope of the standardization of Industrial Ethernet networks, the IEC Fieldbus maintenance team MT9 decided to standardize redundancy methods that can be applied to the numerous existing versions of Industrial Ethernets. This talk starts with the basic principles of redundancy in networked automation systems and examples of applications. It presents the methods selected by the IEC working group for redundancy that will be published in IEC standard 62439, and especially the two paradigms of redundancy in the devices and redundancy in the network and gives an outlook on the progress.

Hubert Kirrmann graduated in Electrotechnics at ETH, Zürich in 1970, where he wrote his PhD in 1986 on fault-tolerant computing. He taught automatic control at the Universidad Distrital of Bogota, Colombia, from 1973 to 1977 and joined the ABB Research Center of Baden, Switzerland. He teaches since 1990 industrial automation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ in Zürich, afterwards EPFL in Lausanne).
He edited IEC standard 61375, the Train Communication Network and worked on railways safety in the Eurocab project. His interest are industrial communication networks and fault-tolerant and safe computing. He is member of the Swiss IEC National Committee and editor of standard IEC 62439.