The Proposed IEEE 1451.6
Standard
IEEE P1451.6 is a transducer and closed-loop controller
standard for operation in an intrinsically-safe cascaded network
environment with multiple controllers on each level. The network transport
layer is a serial CAN bus, which is implemented as an on-board
serial interface in a variety of microcontroller families and as
stand-alone CAN controller chips manufactured by several
companies.
The application layer may be implemented free of licenses and
royalties. The IEEE P1451.6 standard without the intrinsically
safe definitions has been implemented in many transducer and
closed-loop controllers as a CANopen Device Profile standard
under the name DS404 for over ten years. Accordingly, this
approach can be regarded as field tested and proven.
The IEEE P1451.6 standard further
defines an open physical layer as intrinsically-safe.
