Unreferenced Fieldbus Industrial Networks Protocols Summary List

The Fieldbus Unreferenced List
All systems for which no URL is known are listed here.
Latest update: 17-December-2001

© 1999-2001 R.A. Hulsebos

1CHIPNET No URL known.

3T-NET No URL known.
Created by the company 3T (Netherlands). A little bit of public documentation about the protocol is available in the (Dutch) fieldbus report of the CME (Centrum voor Mikro-Elektronica, now called Syntens).

ABUS No URL known.
"Automobile Bitserielle Universelle Schnittstelle" is created by Volkswagen (Germany). It is intended for use in trucks. Controllers are made by Toshiba and Telefunken, and PC-boards by I+ME. The network runs at a speed of 500 Kbit/s. Messages consist of 1,5 startbit, 0,5 syncbit, 12 bits identifier, 16 databits, 1 acknowledge bit and 1 stopbit. The first bit of the identifier distinguishes between commands and data. Commands have a higher priority than data. Every node on the network can subscribe to messages with a certain identifier. In this respect ABUS looks very much like CAN.
This information is based on an article in the German magazine "ATP", issue 11/94.

ACP No URL known.

AF-100 No URL known.

AJ-71C24 No URL known.

ALFABUS No URL known.
Alfabus is a development of the Swedish company Alfa-Laval. The network uses twisted-pair cable with a maximum length of 1 km. Up to 120 nodes can be connected, who communicate at a speed of 62,5 Kbit/s. Messages allow for 31 databytes. A token-bus algorithm is used, allowing for use in real-time applications.
(unverified) Is this the same as Sattbus?

ASYNCLINK No URL known.
Apparently a system for communication of the "MIOS" remote I/O system created by the department "Industrial Automation Systems"(IAS) of the Dutch company Philips. In 1999, IAS was sold off and became what is now the company called Nyquist based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

AUTOLAN No URL known.

AVANT No URL known.

BATTERIEBUS No URL known.

BEAN No URL known.

BOW-BUS No URL known.
The "Bow-Bus" is a network especially designed for the Dutch Sparta "E-Bow" bike, which has a integrated electromotor aiding the bicyclist in keeping a high speed with little effort. The bike has an electromotor, battery and a management system with user control panel, connected via a 24V bus and serial network. The Dutch company 3T (www.3t.nl) developed the protocol called "Bow-bus", for this system, as existing networks (as Profibus, CAN) had too much overhead and were too expensive to implement.
This information is based on an article in the Dutch magazine "Bits & Chips", issue Dec. 2001.

C-BUS No URL known.

CCD No URL known.

CCP No URL known.

CENCAL No URL known.
CENCAL ("Centro di Calcolo") is an old, proprietary protocol developed by the Italian company "Gefran".

CS31 No URL known.

CSC No URL known.

D2B No URL known.

D5 No URL known.

D300 No URL known.

DACNET No URL known.

DAN No URL known.

DANBUSS No URL known.

DATA-HIGHWAY No URL known.

DIRECT-NET No URL known.

DOMOGYN No URL known.

DOTNET No URL known.
Created by the German company Dotronic. The network is intended for use in cars and trucks. It is a 2-wire bus which runs as a speed of 150 Kbit/s, with up to 256 nodes. A master polls the slaves cyclically; a cycle for 31 slaves takes 6,2 msec.
This information is based on an article in the German magazine "Markt & Technik", issue 31/92.

DSI No URL known.

ECP No URL known.

EFABUS No URL known.

EXCOM No URL known.

FAIS No URL known.
FAIS is a Japanese development, hardly ever seen outside that country. The development of the system started in 1987 with 30 companies, with the intention to develop a better, workable MiniMAP. The protocol is based on MiniMap, but they are not 100% compatible. In 1992, more than 500 Japanese companies have introduced or announced support for FAIS. Wiring is based on coax, with a maximum length of 1 km. Bitrate is 5 or 10 Mbit/s, with messages containing up to 1 Kbyte data.
This information is based on an article in the German magazine "Elektronik", issue 11/1992.

FESTO FIELDBUS No URL known.

FILBUS No URL known.
Filbus is a development of the company Gespac. It is based on Bitbus, and every node has its own microprocessor with 64 Kbyte RAM, allowing for enough local intelligence to handle I/O, do some data processing, before sending data over the network. Interesting is the way configurationdata is loaded into a node: a second Bitbus network is available for this. When a node is replaced by a new one, its configuration is automatically loaded via the separate network. This has the advantage that the remaining nodes do not see a performance degradation on the first network as long as the configuration data is being transferred. A central configuration-manager nodes is required for this to work.

FLEXNET No URL known.

FX-NET No URL known.

GENIBUS No URL known.

HI-BUS No URL known.

HITBUS No URL known.
The "Holec Bitbus" is created by the (Dutch) company Holec (now Alsthom). It is standard Bitbus running at 375 Kbit/s, intended for use in railway applications (trams, metro's), but with a defined (own) application layer (OSI 7).

HOMEBUS No URL known.
Homebus (HBS) is a Japanese standard for use in home automation applications. It has been developed by the EIAJ/REEE (EIA Japan, Radio Engineering & Electronics Association) and was ready in 1988. The standard describes the "network outlets" by defining OSI-layers 1, 2, 3 and 7. Wiring is coax and UTP, running at a speed of 9.6 Kbit/s. When coax is used, the cable can be used simultaneously for transfer of video and audio signals. Gateways to the 220V net and the Philips D2B (for control of audio-visual appliances) are available.
More information about this system can be found in the "IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics" of 1988, 1989 and 1990.

HOSTLINK No URL known.

I2S No URL known.

IAI SERIAL No URL known.

I-BUS No URL known.

ICS-MUX No URL known.

IDEC No URL known.

INCOM No URL known.

INFOLINK No URL known.

INSUM No URL known.

IO-BUS No URL known.
Modicon's own name for a remote I/O system based on Interbus/S.

IP-BUS No URL known.

IS2 No URL known.
IS2 (IS-Squared) is a Dutch system (patent 932015951) jointly developed by Philips Domestic Applications, Bronkhorst and Kipp & Zonen. It is a system closely related to I2C, and meant for data-acquisition applications in small machines or appliances. The network consists a data/address line and a clock line (40..200 KHz), and one busmaster and up to 128 nodes can be connected.
Applications realised are a weatherstation and a dust-sensor for vacuum cleaners. The necessary circuitry can easily be integrated on the same chip as the sensor.

ISP No URL known.
ISP "Interoperable Systems Project" is a fieldbus which no longer exists. It was an initiative of the companies Fisher Controls, Rosemount, Siemens and Yokogawa as a reaction on the foundation of WorldFIP. The purpose of ISP was to develop a fieldbus for use in process applications, based on the ISA SP50 standard. However, this standard was moving into a direction (FIP) not wanted by the ISP members, who'd rather use Profibus as base. In 1994, the ISP consortium was dissolved, and the member companies joined the Fieldbus Foundation, where the battles continued.
The ISP consortium has been a major boost for Profibus outside Germany. Several of the features of ISP went into Profibus/PA. Recently, another ISP feature became part of Profibus/DP-V2.

ISIS No URL known.

IVMS No URL known.

JETTWAY No URL known.

KEP No URL known.

K-SEQUENCE No URL known.

LOCALBUS No URL known.

LUWA No URL known.

MASTERNET No URL known.

MCNET No URL known.

MDLC No URL known.

ME-NET No URL known.

MEMOLOG No URL known.

MERKUR No URL known.
Merkur ("Mechatronisches Kommunikationssystem unter Realzeitbedingungen") is a development of Munich university (Germany) in 1994. It is a sensor/actuatornetwork for real-time applications. The wiring is optical fiber, in a double ring, running at a speed of 5 or 10 Mbit/s. Up to 256 nodes can be connected to the network. The maximum distance between nodes is 10m. Each node can send/receive 16 bit data in a "slot"; but can have multiple slots, up to the network-maximum of 4096. Each slot takes 1,2 usec. A fully-equipped network with 4096 slots has a cycle-time of 5 msec.

MEWTOCOL No URL known.

MICRONET No URL known.

MININET No URL known.

MML No URL known.

MOST No URL known.

MULTIZIS No URL known.

MUX-3 No URL known.

N1-BUS No URL known.

N2 No URL known.

NET-2000 No URL known.

NETZBUS No URL known.

NITP No URL known.

NORISNET No URL known.

OCTOBUS No URL known.

OPEN THERM No URL known.
This is a protocol originally developed by Honeywell; later it was handed over to the user group. It is meant for control of heating installations and boilers, for example in homes. It is a point-to-point protocol. The user group seems to exist no longer; the website is removed.

OPUS No URL known.

PALMNET No URL known.

P-BUS No URL known.

PCCC No URL known.

PDNET No URL known.

PDV-BUS No URL known.
The German "Prozess Daten Verarbeitungs Bus" has been one of the first fieldbus systems, developed at the beginning of the 1980's. The PDV-Bus is not current with modern network-systems, and products supporting this protocol are no longer sold.

PHOTOBUS No URL known.

PICONET No URL known.
Piconet is not the name of a system, but a trademark of the company Turck. It is a family of products in the "Busstop" series of fieldbus products, and distinguishes itself (hence the name) by its small size. Piconet products are available for CAN/Open, DeviceNet, Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus/DP, and Modbus.

PLANET No URL known.

POWERLINK No URL known.
A new, Ethernet-based protocol developed by the company B&R. It replaces the TCP/IP stack. The 100 Mbit/s networkcapacity is divided into 400 microsecond slots, and during slot one device has access to the network. This prevents collisions and gives a maximum jitter of around 1 microsecond. In order to enforce this, only hubs may be used (thus no switches).

PPCCOM No URL known.
A network for communication between modules of the "PC20" and "P8" family of PLC's created by the department "Industrial Automation Systems" (IAS) of the Dutch company Philips. There are several versions of PPCCOM in existance, a nibble-based version (PC20) and a byte-based version (P8). The download of programs to these PLC's is also done via PPCCOM, but with a proprietary extension. The protocol is master/slave based, with up to 16 slaves. The cabling is a 4-wire RS485 bus, or RS232. The highest bitrate is 38.4 Kbit/s. The PPCCOM protocol is also used as an application layer for the P8 Ethernet controller, in combination with the PDS-7 programming package. It can also be used for communication between PLC's because a mapping was made from IEC-61131/5 style functionblocks to PPCCOM messages.
In 1997, IAS was sold off and became what is now the company called Nyquist based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

PPI No URL known.

PROCIC-BUS No URL known.

PROXBLOX No URL known.

RS-BUS No URL known.

S-BUS No URL known.
Created by the company SAIA. It is a network based on 2-wire RS485, running at 38,4 Kbit/s with up to 255 nodes. Maximum size of the network is 1200m, which can be increased (when using repeaters) to 9.6 km.

SATTBUS No URL known.
Created by the company Alfa-Laval Automation. Sattbus is a proprietary protocol; the network uses on twisted-pair wiring, running at 62.5 Kbit/s. A token-ring supports up to 256 nodes. An alternative version runs on top of TCP/IP.
(unverified) Is this the same as Alfabus?

SCP No URL known.
SCP "Standard Corporate Protocol" is Ford's version of the J1850 bus. It runs at a speed of 40 Kbit/s.

SEABUS No URL known.
(unverified) A protocol developed by Siemens SEA.

SELECAN No URL known.
SeleCAN is a development of the Swiss company Selectron. As its name implies, it is based on CAN. The network is intended for remote I/O applications, and developed +/- 1995. At that time, there was no standardised open CAN application protocol (we now have CAN/Open, Devicenet and SDS) and that led Selectron to develop its own application layer. The protocol is quite simple, and has very little overhead because of clever use of the CAN message-identifier. Each I/O module can have 8 bytes (64 bits) of inputs and 8 bytes of outputs. Additionally, several commands are available to control each I/O module; this uses the first two bytes of the CAN data for selection of the command, with 6 bytes remaining for parameters of the command. Selectron also allowed download of programs to its own PLC's with later versions of the protocol. A network supports up to 31 I/O nodes, on bitrates of 1000, 500, 100 and 20 Kbit/s. Wiring is according to ISO-11898 as is standard in many CAN networks.
The SeleCAN protocol has also been used by various other CAN-based remote I/O vendors, such as Festo, Philips and OmniRay.
As of 1997, the SeleCAN protocol seems to have been dropped in favor of CAN/Open.

SIGNALBUS No URL known.
Created by the German company Softing in 1992. It is a network intended for remote I/O applications, with a maximum of 4 Kbit I/O data. Up to 200 nodes can be connected to the network, which uses optical fiber. The bitrate is 2 Mbit/s. There is a master/slave relationship between nodes.
Softing is better known for its Profibus developments. The company was later bought by Siemens. The original owners than started another company which was again called Softing. It is unclear whether the rights to Signalbus are now property of Siemens or the 'new' Softing.

SIMUBUS No URL known.

SINEC L1 No URL known.

SINEC L2 No URL known.
Sinec L2, the 2nd low-speed fieldbus from Siemens, was created in 1992 as a reaction on the slowness of Profibus/FMS. This protocol was originally intended to be quick enough for remote I/O, but this didn't turn out to be so.
Sinec L2 (also called L2/DP) was partially based on existing Profibus technology (FDL) which is the lower layer (OSI Layer 2) only. The L2 specification described how to use FDL in order to create a remote I/O system with it. Actually L2 is quite simple, the specification is only 15 pages A4.
Because of the dominance of Siemens in the European market, many other vendors designed their equipment to be L2-compatible. Although L2 was claimed to be "Profibus compatible" the protocol is not compatible with FMS. The lack of support for FMS meant that it never became wide-spread.
The L2 protocol gradually evolved into the first version of Profibus/DP, after Siemens started cooperating with the Profibus User's Group (PNO). As of 1993, with the release of Profibus/DP, the L2 protocol quickly disappeared.

SIOX No URL known.

S-LINK No URL known.

SPI No URL known.

SUCONET No URL known.

SYMAX No URL known.

SYSBUS No URL known.

SYSTRON No URL known.

TBP No URL known.

TECHLAN No URL known.
Created by the Dutch company Positronika in 1984. The network was intended for connecting multiple PDP-11's together for use in automated measuring equipment. In an era where Ethernet did not exist and IEEE-488 was quite new, Techlan was ahead of its time because most people had never heard of a "network", and didn't know what to use it for. Techlan was discontinued in 1987; Positronika focussed on LAN's instead which at that time was a booming market. Positronika no longer exists.

TEXNET No URL known.
Texnet "Textile Network" is the result of the initiative of a group of vendors of textile-processing equipment. The bus allows up to 254 nodes to communicate with each other at a speed of 187,5 Kbit/s.

TIWAY No URL known.

TSN No URL known.

TWINBUS No URL known.

UNITELWAY No URL known.

USC No URL known.

USS No URL known.

VARINET No URL known.

VBUS No URL known.
(unverified) A protocol developed by Vega.

VERSANET No URL known.

VULCANO No URL known.
(unverified) A CAN-based protocol, developed for Volvo.

3T-NET	No URL known.
	Created by the company 3T (Netherlands). A little bit of public documentation about the protocol is available in the (Dutch) fieldbus report of the CME (Centrum voor Mikro-Elektronica, now called Syntens).

ALFABUS	No URL known.
	Alfabus is a development of the Swedish company Alfa-Laval. The network uses twisted-pair cable with a maximum length of 1 km. Up to 120 nodes can be connected, who communicate at a speed of 62,5 Kbit/s. Messages allow for 31 databytes. A token-bus algorithm is used, allowing for use in real-time applications. (unverified) Is this the same as Sattbus?

ASYNCLINK	No URL known.
	Apparently a system for communication of the "MIOS" remote I/O system created by the department "Industrial Automation Systems"(IAS) of the Dutch company Philips. In 1999, IAS was sold off and became what is now the company called Nyquist based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

CENCAL	No URL known.
	CENCAL ("Centro di Calcolo") is an old, proprietary protocol developed by the Italian company "Gefran".

DOTNET	No URL known.
	Created by the German company Dotronic. The network is intended for use in cars and trucks. It is a 2-wire bus which runs as a speed of 150 Kbit/s, with up to 256 nodes. A master polls the slaves cyclically; a cycle for 31 slaves takes 6,2 msec. This information is based on an article in the German magazine "Markt & Technik", issue 31/92.

HITBUS	No URL known.
	The "Holec Bitbus" is created by the (Dutch) company Holec (now Alsthom). It is standard Bitbus running at 375 Kbit/s, intended for use in railway applications (trams, metro's), but with a defined (own) application layer (OSI 7).

IO-BUS	No URL known.
	Modicon's own name for a remote I/O system based on Interbus/S.

OPEN THERM	No URL known.
	This is a protocol originally developed by Honeywell; later it was handed over to the user group. It is meant for control of heating installations and boilers, for example in homes. It is a point-to-point protocol. The user group seems to exist no longer; the website is removed.

PDV-BUS	No URL known.
	The German "Prozess Daten Verarbeitungs Bus" has been one of the first fieldbus systems, developed at the beginning of the 1980's. The PDV-Bus is not current with modern network-systems, and products supporting this protocol are no longer sold.

PICONET	No URL known.
	Piconet is not the name of a system, but a trademark of the company Turck. It is a family of products in the "Busstop" series of fieldbus products, and distinguishes itself (hence the name) by its small size. Piconet products are available for CAN/Open, DeviceNet, Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus/DP, and Modbus.

POWERLINK	No URL known.
	A new, Ethernet-based protocol developed by the company B&R. It replaces the TCP/IP stack. The 100 Mbit/s networkcapacity is divided into 400 microsecond slots, and during slot one device has access to the network. This prevents collisions and gives a maximum jitter of around 1 microsecond. In order to enforce this, only hubs may be used (thus no switches).

S-BUS	No URL known.
	Created by the company SAIA. It is a network based on 2-wire RS485, running at 38,4 Kbit/s with up to 255 nodes. Maximum size of the network is 1200m, which can be increased (when using repeaters) to 9.6 km.

SATTBUS	No URL known.
	Created by the company Alfa-Laval Automation. Sattbus is a proprietary protocol; the network uses on twisted-pair wiring, running at 62.5 Kbit/s. A token-ring supports up to 256 nodes. An alternative version runs on top of TCP/IP. (unverified) Is this the same as Alfabus?

SCP	No URL known.
	SCP "Standard Corporate Protocol" is Ford's version of the J1850 bus. It runs at a speed of 40 Kbit/s.

SEABUS	No URL known.
	(unverified) A protocol developed by Siemens SEA.

TEXNET	No URL known.
	Texnet "Textile Network" is the result of the initiative of a group of vendors of textile-processing equipment. The bus allows up to 254 nodes to communicate with each other at a speed of 187,5 Kbit/s.

VBUS	No URL known.
	(unverified) A protocol developed by Vega.

VULCANO	No URL known.
	(unverified) A CAN-based protocol, developed for Volvo.