EtherCAT operating principle

This supplementary manual describes the extended functional capabilities of the AX2000 with the AX2090-B110 EtherCAT interface. The basic functions, together with general advice on installation and commissioning, are described in the AX2000 manual.

EtherCAT technology overcomes these inherent limitations of other Ethernet solutions: the Ethernet packet is no longer received, then interpreted and copied as process data at every connection. The EtherCAT slave devices read the data addressed to them while the telegram passes through the device. Similarly, input data are inserted while the telegram passes through (see figure). The telegrams are only delayed by a few nanoseconds. Since an Ethernet frame reaches the data of many devices both in send and receive direction, the usable data rate increases to over 90%. The full-duplex features of 100BaseTx are fully utilized, so that effective data rates of > 100 Mbit/s (>90% of 2 x 100 Mbit/s) can be achieved.