Getting started with Ethernet-APL

While the big play for Ethernet-APL will ultimately be in new greenfield projects, those clean-sheet designs with fully converged IT/OT architectures are still a few years out. Meanwhile, select instruments are set to hit the market by mid-2022, and progressive end-user organizations will be looking for more isolated use cases at brownfield facilities to test out and prove the new technology’s worth.

Many of the most apparent use cases for HART-IP over Ethernet-APL derive from the increased availability of data that higher bandwidth affords. In a brownfield context, this is most relevant when adding complex new instruments that generate more data of diagnostic significance—especially in hazardous area installations that require Ethernet-APL’s intrinsic safety capabilities.

Real-time access to valve signature data from a valve controller, for example, can be used to diagnose a range of issues before they lead to unscheduled process downtime. The same can be said for Coriolis meters, magnetic flowmeters and radar level gauges. Process analyzers, in particular, will benefit from the order of magnitude increase in power made available to instruments by Ethernet-
APL relative to 4-20mA, representing a less expensive installation than the power supply plus four-wire Ethernet connections that otherwise might have been needed.

But the larger context of increased secondary data bandwidth is the ability to collaborate more effectively, and to send that more nuanced secondary data more easily to the individuals—and applications—that can make effective use of it.

Hybrid environments 

For most end users—especially in the US, where few greenfield facilities are expected to be built in the near term—their first experiences of Ethernet-APL will be in hybrid environments that also include 4-20mA HART devices. On the positive side, with the debut of fully configurable input/output (I/O) systems some 10 years ago, industry already is on its way to moving I/O from control room environments out into field junction boxes.

Configurable I/O has delivered substantial benefits of its own, helping to decouple hardware design from system software development and taking instrumentation and control system design off the critical path of project execution. It’s also reduced costs and system footprint, eliminating traditional marshalling cabinets in many newer facilities. Like fieldbus before it, Ethernet-APL effectively distributes I/O even further, relocating the transition between analog sensor signals and the digital world of ones and zeroes into the field devices themselves.

From a practical perspective, this means that the remote junction box is where 4-20mA HART and Ethernet-APL are most likely to converge. That remote junction box could relatively easily include both configurable I/O as well as an Ethernet-APL switch—both of which speak HART-IP over Ethernet up into the control system architecture. Further, a potential mix of Ethernet-APL with traditional 4-20mA HART devices will likely entail a range of network infrastructure devices designed to accommodate the transitional hybrid architectures required.

While dual devices sharing an Ethernet connection in the same box are easy to imagine hybrid approaches are also likely. Analog Devices, one of the suppliers of chipsets for Ethernet-APL as well as the multiplexers that extract HART data from 4-20mA loops, has envisioned a device with hybrid functionality. And for suppliers like Emerson, which uses a physical module to characterize its remote I/O channels (rather than software), a new Ethernet-APL module under development will allow these new digital channels to coexist side-by-side with their 4-20mA HART counterparts.

In all three of these scenarios, a shared commitment to the HART ecosystem and data model will ease the industry’s ultimate transition to Ethernet-APL as the standard physical layer for field instrument communications

Toward a clean-sheet design

In the not-too-distant future, a greenfield facility or new production unit offers the most fertile ground for Ethernet-APL technology, since the baseline will involve comparing proven Ethernet-APL plus HART-IP technologies with the 4-20mA plus HART status quo. A greenfield design need not weigh sunk costs against new benefits. Rather, a clean-sheet design will allow end users to realize the full benefits of a secure, high-speed digital infrastructure that reaches from field devices to enterprise systems and the cloud.

From an architecture perspective, tomorrow’s Ethernet-APL systems won’t look all that different from the remote, configurable I/O systems of today. Indeed, replacing remote enclosures filled with configurable I/O with remote enclosures filled with Ethernet-APL switches may even allow system designers more flexibility when it comes to how many devices can be connected through a remote enclosure of given dimensions. 

In any case, the transition to Ethernet-APL spurs (out to individual instruments) should be a relatively straightforward adjustment from a design perspective. The addition of the APL trunk concept will allow for new distribution models in areas lacking infrastructure for power and communications. And when it comes to installing and commissioning this new breed of devices in a greenfield facility, users will really begin to benefit from the dramatic improvements in communications speed that the move to Ethernet-APL represents.