What is EtherCAT?

EtherCAT is an Ethernet based fieldbus master / slave functionality. It was initiated by the company Beckhoff and developed for applications in automation technology. The development focus was hereby placed on extremely short cycle time periods, low jitter for accurate synchronization and low costs.

An efficient synchronous data throughput is made possible due to the protocol features of EtherCAT.

The network capabilities of Ethernet allow the set up of a network with many distributed slave devices. Various network topologies are supported; among others also those of CAN-bus well-known bus topologies.

The above properties, in particular the standardized accurate alignment of distributed clocks to synchronize the slave devices, make EtherCAT very interesting for applications in the (distributed) measurement technology.

With CANopen over EtherCAT (CoE), EtherCAT can provision the same communication mechanisms such as known from CANopen devices, ideal for applications in test-bench measurement technology.