PI International (www.profibus.com), provider of PROFIBUS fieldbus and PROFINET industrial Ethernet solutions, has specified its PROFIsafe protocol for wireless networks. The new version of the PROFIsafe profile (Version 2.4) describes the conditions for the functionally safe transmission of data via WLAN and Bluetooth. The concept has been assessed and approved by the BGIA and TÜV.
The publication of the specification of PROFIsafe on PROFINET IO, and thus on Ethernet confirmed the compatibility, in principle, of PROFIsafe for wireless networks. It was then simply a case of defining the details in respect of the issue of security. The new PROFIsafe profile has accomplished this for secure cyclic data exchange. First applications are now being deployed, according to PI International.
PI members can download the profile for free from the PI Web site (non-members pay a fee of 150 euros). For more details, see www.profibus.com/pall/meta/downloads/#Profiles.
