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Abstract—Industrial automation has been recently challenged and torque) sent by the higher hierarchical layer, i.e. the
by new initiatives such as Industry 4.0, which promises higher supervisory level often implemented by a Programmable Logic
connectivity between the devices in an industrial plant. The Controller (PLC), and to respond with alarm conditions when
goal of this work is to discuss how electric drives, widely em-
ployed in industry, could benefit from this increased connectivity. faults occur [3]. This situation is rapidly changing due to
Specific applications, such as condition monitoring and multi- innovative trends that increase the electric drive capabilities
drive systems, are considered to show the advantages of the within the industrial context. The aim of this work is to discuss
industrial network presence, combined with the introduction of these trends.
new data driven methods. Moreover, the status of industrial Particular focus is put on the condition monitoring (CM) of
communication technologies is depicted, and their suitability
for condition monitoring and multi-drive systems applications the electric drive. Various methods for monitoring the status
is described. of both the electric motor components and the converter parts
Index Terms—condition monitoring, electric drives, industrial have been proposed [4]. Some of these methods exploit the
networks, multi-drive systems presence of the processor in the converter, which is originally
needed for performing the calculations required to supply the
I. I NTRODUCTION motor with suitable voltage references by means of pulse-
In recent years, the introduction of methods and devices width modulation (PWM) strategies.
from the information and communication technology (ICT) With the availability of a continuously increasing com-
world has enabled proposals on how to profoundly change the putational power, the converter processors can accomplish
industry. In particular, the application of the Internet of Things additional tasks, by exploiting all the information received
and cyberphysical system concepts to the industrial context from the sensors that are anyway installed in the electric drive.
originated the “Industry 4.0” and the “Industrial Internet” Given the amount of information that the converter can acquire
initiatives in Germany and United States, respectively [1], [2]. and process, the electric drive could even extend its role.
The aims of these visions are a higher efficiency and flexibility, It could process information and make decisions locally, or
through an increased connectivity between the devices in an directly exchange information with other drives participating
industrial plant and through the processing of information in in the same industrial plant in order to maximize the overall
cloud-based applications. plant performance [5]. Moreover, direct access to the cloud
A fundamental factor in industrial automation is the elec- infrastructure would allow data-analytics-based maintenance
tromechanical conversion, where electric drives, consisting of and product development.
an electric motor supplied by a frequency converter, play a All these possibilities rely massively on the communication
major role. Particularly during the last three decades, the need capabilities of the electric drive with the other entities of
of performance and efficiency optimization, together with the the network. Therefore, in this work an overview of typi-
necessity of process flexibility, have required an increased use cal networks used for industrial communication is presented
of electric drives. (fieldbuses and ethernet-based networks), as well as emerging
In current industrial plants electric drives are part of the technologies (wireless networks). A particular attention is put
two lowest hierarchical layers, known as the plant and the on the capabilities required to support the extended drive func-
direct process control levels. The role of electric drives is tionalities, such as the timely transmission of larger amount
limited to execute command references (e.g. position, speed of data and traffic prioritization. It is then discussed which
of these communication networks could support the new roles
This work has been supported in part by Vinnova ”Smartare elektroniksys-
tem” strategic innovation program and the Swedish Electromobility Center of the electric drives, and how processing and communication
(SEC). could be optimized, considering the processing power of the
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IV. S TATUS OF I NDUSTRIAL C OMMUNICATION TABLE II
T ECHNOLOGIES S ELECTED REAL - TIME ETHERNET PROTOCOLS .
During the last three decades, the field of industrial com- Protocol Service Channel Access Data Rate
munication has continuously evolved [20]. A large variation PROFINET Sync + Async Polling 100 Mbps
EtherCat Sync + Async Polling 100 Mbps
of communication protocols is now available for the electric Ethernet Powerlink Sync + Async Polling 100 Mbps
drives in order to share information within an industrial
network [21]. Industrial control requires hard real-time oper-
ations, implying that missing a deadline causes a total system
tions. Wireless communication, on one hand can ensure the
failure. Under reasonable network loads, the hard real-time
increased flexibility of the plants, on the other hand, the com-
requirement demands synchronous access, meaning that the
munication itself may be unreliable in the harsh industrial en-
network nodes have the rights to access the transmission
vironment. Table III displays a selection of industrial wireless
medium periodically. The typical access methods are polling,
protocols [24]. As a consequence of the different transmission
when a central controller sends to or requests information from
medium, the maximum data rates are considerably lower than
the controlled nodes (the drives) in a round-robin manner,
for the fieldbus and real-time Ethernet protocols. Moreover,
token passing, when transmission rights are forwarded through
as these systems use open spectrum bands, the transmissions
a virtual ring, and TDMA, with predefined transmission sched-
may be disturbed by other wireless networks transmitting in
ule. In addition, the remaining time can be accessible for
the same area.
non-real-time communication, often through random channel
access with carrier sensing (CSMA). TABLE III
The most traditional category is represented by the so-called S ELECTED INDUSTRIAL WIRELESS PROTOCOLS .
fieldbus systems. Table I displays a few examples together with
Protocol Service Channel Access Data Rate
some characteristics, as the supported service, the mode in Wireless Hart Sync TDMA 250 kbps
which the transmission medium is accessed (Channel Access) ISA100.11a Sync TDMA 250 kbps
and the maximum obtainable transmission rate (Data Rate). Zigbee Sync + Async TDMA+CSMA 250 kbps
6LoWPAN Sync + Async Polling+CSMA 250 kbps
Some of these solutions, like Profibus and CAN, provide
only asynchronous access, and thus do not directly ensure the
timely delivery of hard real-time messages. This instead have In addition to these dedicated wireless industrial sensor net-
to be handled by proper network dimensioning [22]. Others, work technologies, modern mobile telecommunication systems
like ControlNet, can serve a mix of real-time and non-real- could be good candidates to support industrial communication
time traffic, providing both synchronous and asynchronous [1]. The advantage of LTE and the emerging 5G networks
service. This is typically achieved by the introduction of a is twofold. First, the use of dedicated spectrum can guarantee
slotted time structure, where a part of a time-slot is reserved high data rates and strict transmission deadlines. Second, these
for synchronous, and and the other part for asynchronous systems can serve a diversity of applications, which allows en-
transmissions. terprises to use one single networking technology on all layers.
It is worth noting that the maximum data rate values given The advantages come of course with the drawbacks of complex
for the various communication protocols listed in this section and costly communication hardware and the additional cost of
are simple approximations because the actual values depend spectrum lease [25].
on several network characteristics, like the network diameter
and the node hardware. V. A PPLICATIONS AND ANALYSIS
In this section three industrial application examples de-
TABLE I scribed in Section II and Section III are analyzed from a
S ELECTED INDUSTRIAL FIELDBUS PROTOCOLS .
data communication perspective. For the investigated cases,
Protocol Service Channel Access Data Rate the suitability of the communication technologies reported in
Profibus DP Async Polling [20] 12 Mbps Section IV is discussed.
CAN Async CSMA+prio [22] 1 Mbps
ControlNet Sync + Async Token Passing [20] 5 Mbps A. Condition monitoring with MCSA or similar methods
Traditional CM methods as the MCSA require the acquisi-
The second category of industrial communication protocols tion of signals having the characteristics displayed in Table IV.
is based on the Ethernet technology, but extended with real- The listed values are not meant to be accurate in absolute
time capabilities [21], [23]. Table II lists some examples of terms, but they can be considered as a possible case study.
the real-time Ethernet protocols. These solutions clearly guar- Generally, MCSA techniques acquire signals at the same
antee a higher transmission rate with respect to the fieldbus PWM frequency (e.g. fc = 10 kHz) with a specific observation
systems, and the need for providing both synchronous and time window Tobs . The latter parameter is fundamental be-
asynchronous access is widely recognized. cause it determines the frequency resolution df of the resulting
The third and most recently developed category of industrial frequency spectrum, being df = 1/Tobs when a Discrete
communication protocols is based on wireless communica- Fourier Transform (DFT) is applied. The resulting df = 0.2 Hz
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TABLE IV the measurement of Fig. 2, gives a frequency resolution df =
S IGNALS CHARACTERISTICS FOR CM WITH MCSA. 100 kHz that is reasonable because the ringing phenomenon
Parameter Symbol Value is in the order of MHz.
Current signals amount Nc 3 The data size originated by one single measurement session
Speed/position signals amount Ns 1 is:
Signals resolution b 12 bit Nc b fos Tobs Nm
Sampling frequency fc 10 kHz POS = = 22.5 kBytes (2)
Observation time window Tobs 5s 8
Number of measurements Nm 10 that is two orders of magnitude lower than the case studied in
Section V-A. Therefore, in this case, the local processing unit
may be more suitable to perform CM techniques. Whether the
is reasonable with respect to common MCSA methods [8]. data need to be sent to an external processing unit (or to a
Moreover, it is assumed that CM methods will be applied to cloud), the same considerations done in Section V-A apply,
a consecutive number of measurements Nmeas for a greater but with more relaxed constraints.
accuracy.
C. Centralized control in a multi-drive system
The data size originated by one single measurement session
is: As stated in Section III, in multi-drives systems, load-
(Nc + Ns ) b fc Tobs Nm sharing strategies, total losses minimization techniques and
PCM = = 3 MBytes. (1)
8 DC-bus energy optimization methods will benefit from a col-
The measurement sessions are repeated periodically with a laborative network of electric drives. A particularly interesting
very low frequency (hours or even days) given the slowness of situation is when a centralized control takes completely care
the degrading phenomena in electric drives. Between consecu- of the reference generation for the single electric drives in the
tive measurement sessions, the obtained amount of data PCM system. In this manner, the centralized control will have all the
needs to be adequately processed, according to the specific CM data available coming from each of the electric drives in order
technique. The involved data size and the type of processing to perform the required optimization techniques. However, it
required (DFT) might exceed the computational limitation of is assumed that all the local processing units still performs
the electric drive’s processing unit, which in the meanwhile low-level tasks such as communication with drive sensors
needs to perform continuously control-related tasks within and PWM. This may potentially induce a reduction of the
stringent time constraints. computational power required for the local processing units
An alternative is the communication of the acquired data and therefore impact the system cost.
to an external processing unit, which can in turn perform CM The signals exchanged between the centralized control unit
algorithms and store the results for historical-data-based diag- and each single electric drive in the network have the charac-
nostics. A possibility is to perform the mentioned processing teristics displayed in Table VI. Differently from what reported
in the cloud, connected to all the industrial plant’s electric
drives. TABLE VI
The transmission of the CM data PCM does not have real- S IGNALS CHARACTERISTICS FOR A CENTRALIZED CONTROL IN A
MULTI - DRIVE SYSTEM .
time constraints, and should be transmitted through asyn-
chronous access in the industrial network, in the time that is Parameter Symbol Value
left by the more demanding control applications. Most of the Current signals amount Nc 2
DC-bus voltage signals amount Nv 1
technologies in Tables I-III would support this communication Speed/position signals amount Ns 1
and provide data delivery within minutes. PWM reference signals amount Nref 3
Signals resolution b 12 bit
B. Condition monitoring with oversampling-based methods Sampling frequency fc 10 kHz
Innovative CM methods based on oversampling, as the one
described in [11], need to acquire signals with the character- in Section V-A and Section V-B, the data communication must
istics displayed in Table V. respect strict time constraints. At each PWM period, equal to
the sampling period Tc = 1/fc , the measurements of currents,
TABLE V DC-bus voltage and speed (or position) are transmitted to the
S IGNALS CHARACTERISTICS FOR OVERSAMPLING - BASED CM.
central processing unit, which calculates the references to be
Parameter Symbol Value sent back to the local PWM modulator of each electric drive.
Current signals amount Nc 3 The data rate of the exchange between the central processing
Signals resolution b 12 bit
Oversampling frequency fos 50 MHz unit and one single local drive is:
Observation time window Tobs 10 μs
Number of measurements Nm 10 RM D = (Nc + Nv + Ns + Nref ) b fc = 840 kbps. (3)
The obtained result should be considered only for its order of
Considerations done in Section V-A apply also to this case. magnitude, because overhead bits required in the transmission
The chosen Tobs value, comparable to the one of [11] and with are not take into account.
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