基于FPGA的EtherCAT从站模块设计

The Design of EtherCAT Slave Module Based on FPGA

EtherCAT作为高性能工业以太网的代表,凭借其低延迟、高速率、高吞吐率等特点在工业自动化领域得到了广泛应用。针对目前EtherCAT从站需要依赖国外专用从站控制器芯片以保证网络性能的问题,提出一种使用FPGA芯片代替专用从站控制器芯片的EtherCAT从站软硬件方案。利用示波器测量EtherCAT从站的各项性能,测试结果表明,该设计方案与其它采用专用控制器芯片的EtherCAT从站方案相比,可提高EtherCAT网络的实时性能,减小通信周期抖动。该方案降低了EtherCAT从站实现成本,且拥有自主知识产权,可满足工业通信高实时性、低时延的要求。

As the representative of high performance industrial ethernet,EtherCAT has been widely used in the field of industrial automation due to its low latency,high speed and high throughput.Aiming at the current situation that EtherCAT slave station needs to rely on foreign special slave controller chips to ensure network performance,this paper proposes a hardware and software scheme of EtherCAT slave station using FPGA chips instead of special slave controller chips.The performance of the EtherCAT slave station is measured by an oscilloscope.The test results show that the design scheme can improve the real-time performance of the EtherCAT network and reduce the jitter of the communication cycle compared with other EtherCAT slave station schemes using dedicated controller chips.This scheme reduces the implementation cost of EtherCAT slave station and has independent intellectual property rights,which meets the requirements of high real-time and low delay in industrial communications.