NEC develops Ethernet PHY family for industrial automation systems

KAWASAKI, JAPAN & SANTA CLARA, USA & DUESSELDORF, GERMANY: NEC Electronics today announced the development of a new family of industrial Ethernet physical layers (PHYs) for 10Base-T and 100Base-TX/FX.

The new PHYs will offer the best-in-class high-speed industrial connectivity and advanced cable diagnostics, and are optimized for existing industrial Ethernet protocols used in industrial automation products.

The use of industrial Ethernet has consistently ramped up in recent years and now has a wider use in automation systems throughout the industry. NEC Electronics’ new PHYs address the expansive and unique needs of system designers in the industrial automation market to interconnect industrial controllers from different manufacturers throughout a process plant.

Key features
1. Industry-leading high-speed data transfer
The new PHYs enable low node latency, delivering high-speed data transmission and reception without failure.

2. Enhanced link control
With a powerful link control, NEC Electronics’ new PHYs provide high-speed link-up and link-down control mechanisms. For example, this feature can be applied in robotics that require very fast link-up and link-down control.

3. Advanced cable monitoring and diagnostic features
The new PHYs enable consistent cable quality monitoring for easy maintenance, and support easy repair during the maintenance cycle. The cable diagnostic feature is based on the time domain reflectometer (TDR) function that determines and localizes cable problems.

4. Accurate time stamping
With the time stamping of transmitted and received packets, the new PHYs provide outstanding timing precision by enabling continuous and automatic processes where the clock differences are noted and automatically adjusted. The time stamping of transmitted and received packets allows designers to determine the differences between clock frequencies and correct for them to achieve real-time performance.

NEC Electronics’ family of PHYs provides users of Ethernet communication in industrial environments with unique features that are not available in existing implementations. The new PHYs are compatible with standard industrial Ethernet communication protocols such as EtherNet/IP, SERCOS III, EtherCAT and Profinet.

They are also compliant with IEEE802.3 and qualify for robust industrial environments. NEC Electronics’ new PHYs enhance the company’s other Ethernet-based product offerings such as V850 Ethernet-based microcontrollers (MCUs), ASSPs and ASICs, and are also available as embeddable macros for these products.

“Our new PHY family demonstrates NEC Electronics’ commitment to the industrial automation markets and underlines our leading position in communication networks today,” said Kazuyoshi Yamada, vice president, 1st SoC Operations Unit, NEC Electronics. “Our PHY technology provides robust, high-performance Ethernet-based network solutions to deliver multiple innovations for the industry’s automation systems.”

NEC Electronics will be announcing the first member of its industrial Ethernet PHY family in March 2010 with mass production expected to start in Q3 of 2010.