Simulation of Process Control Network Traffic

Abstract: The majority of industrial control systems today are distributed over networks. These systems tend to be complex, and can be difficult both to configure and to analyze; therefore, there is definitely a gain in being able to simulate the behaviour of such a system prior to the actual implementation. This master’s thesis investigates the possibility to simulate the ABB automation system 800xA by expanding the Matlab/Simulink tool TrueTime. Throughout, the work has been focused on modeling the network communications and the internal behaviour of the control system nodes. Furthermore, the developed simulator has been used to examine a proposal to optimize traffic handling of the ABB specific protocol IAC. Different performance measures have been investigated, both regarding control and network performance. One measure of particular interest has been the round trip time of a packet. The simulator has proven to be able to reproduce results of round trip times measured in an example system, explaining timing behaviour originating deep down in the control system nodes. Other simulations have involved different system settings, analyzing their impact on system performance.