icECAT EtherCAT Network Simulator

The EtherCAT network simulator supports the development and testing of control applications, especially when no physical EtherCAT slave devices are available.

The simulator can also be used for simulating error conditions at application level and thus for testing the behavior of a control application.

Licensing:

• Shipment complete in source code
• Project based license, no royalties

Functionality:

• Portable library for setting up a software-in-the-loop (SiL) simulation of an EtherCAT network
• EtherCAT network topology is defined by an ENI file

Architecture:

• Designed as a passive library that can be linked to an application with the icECAT master stack
• The simulation application can run in an engineering environment (e.g. on Microsoft Windows), in an automated test environment (e.g. on a Linux server) or on the target system (e.g. Embedded Linux)
• Switching between the real and simulated network can be realized in the control application
• Callbacks can be registered on certain events, e.g. ESM state transition, process image update
• The simulation can be executed in real time, in fast motion or without time reference. A cycle time down to 100 μs is possible (depending on the network size and simulation environment) for the real-time simulation

Features:

• Simulation of the network topology and the EtherCAT slave devices based on an ENI file
• Simulation of the EtherCAT state machine (ESM) of the slave devices
• Access to simulated ESC RAM
• Simulation of process data (PDOs)
• Simulation of mailbox communication
  • CoE communication, SDO upload/download to a simulated object dictionary
  • Simulation of the state machine of CiA402 devices
• Adaptation of external simulation tools is possible based on the API

IBV provides professional development and integration services for industrial Ethernet technology, real-time and embedded systems.