Performance aspects of PROFIBUS segments interconnected through ATM

Field buses have been developed to fulfill real-time requirements of applications related to factory automation. However, they are limited in their extension, and can only cover geographical areas such as factory halls or buildings. In order to reduce this drawback a possible solution is to connect field bus segments using interworking devices and a backbone network. This backbone could be an ATM network. Within this paper we concentrate on the interworking of PROFIBUS segments. The main topic is to investigate performance aspects of such an interworking concept. From PROFIBUS point of view the impact on the parameterization of the PROFIBUS system is of special interest. Simulations of an example PROFIBUS system were performed in order to cover this aspect, to evaluate the feasibility of the presented approach and to show its limitations concerning the range of PROFIBUS applications it is suited for. Another main topic in this concern is the choice of appropriate QoS parameters for the..