FOUNDATION FIELDBUS INTEROPERABILITY TESTING

Foundation Fieldbus is a known as the smart protocol that is a combination of digital communication simultaneously superimposed on a conventional 4-20mA signal [IJ. Back to the past of the fieldbus, there were a problem on lack of interoperability occurred. There were so many different protocols in the market and the product could only work with other product from the same vendor. PETRONAS as the established company will apply this fieldbus technology in its plants. A Foundation Fieldbus system is already been installed at level 1, building 23 in University Technology PETRONAS. With collaboration from vendors from Emerson, Honeywell, Yokogawa, and Foxboro, PETRONAS team and UTP students, a Foundation Fieldbus Interoperability Testing will be conducted. The objectives of the testing are to get a PETRONAS Technical Standard on the Foundation Fieldbus system and come out with a report on the results from interoperability testing that will be the reference for system in PETRONAS. In order to achieve the objectives above, three different tests will be done through the Foundation Fieldbus Interoperability Testing which is Basic Interoperability Test, Stress Test and Diagnostic Capability. The results and data will be recorded. Due to the time constraint, the UTP team only managed to complete the Basic Interoperability Test until February 2009. The other two tests will be complete by the next group of UTP team. In the next chapter, there will be a detail on the training and procedure of the different system conducted by Emerson, Foxboro, Y okogawa and Honeywell, in order to proceed with the interoperability test. But the author will only focus on the Honeywell system. At the same time, there will be information on the Foundation Fieldbus architecture