PA profile V4.0 passed

As Eth­er­net-based com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, Profinet is increas­ing­ly becom­ing one of the main­stays in future automa­tion con­cepts, as the trans­fer of increas­ing amounts of infor­ma­tion becomes an essen­tial fea­ture. Profinet can also use the pro­files to pro­vide the data with seman­tics so that they have a mean­ing­ful mean­ing. With the approval of the final ver­sion of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion-inde­pen­dent PA pro­file V4.0, PI (Profibus & Profinet Inter­na­tion­al) has tak­en an impor­tant step towards the upgrad­ing of Profinet for use in process automa­tion sys­tems of Gen­er­a­tion Indus­trie 4.0.
In addi­tion to the excel­lent per­for­mance already avail­able today, Profinet offers a num­ber of exten­sive func­tions for process appli­ca­tions. These include opti­mal redun­dan­cy mech­a­nisms, Dynam­ic Recon­fig­u­ra­tion for smooth device replace­ment dur­ing oper­a­tion and time stamp­ing for the record­ing of event sequences, etc. Now the PA pro­file is made avail­able in a new ver­sion for the first time for Profinet and thus meets anoth­er impor­tant require­ment of the users.
How­ev­er, to indus­tries such. For exam­ple, to be able to serve oil & gas or chem­i­cals, fur­ther tech­ni­cal require­ments for Eth­er­net in the field area have to be cre­at­ed. Longer cabling dis­tances, 2‑wire tech­nol­o­gy, bus pow­er sup­ply and intrin­sic safe­ty can not yet be stan­dard­ized with today’s Eth­er­net. PI has start­ed this top­ic in coop­er­a­tion with oth­er orga­ni­za­tions with the aim of being able to use Profinet in all areas of process automation.