On the Interoperability and its Test of Software in the Measurement and Control Domain

Abstract

In a case that a lot of field devices provided by many different manufacturers are linked by one network, troubles of a distributed system will be difficultly identified. In this paper, we make the point that software tests of interoperability among these field devices are needed to ensure the system compatibility over a field network. First, we survey the international standards related to the measurement and control domain and point out the necessity of such software tests. Second, we describe an outline of structure of the next generational manufacturing systems and discuss in detail what have to be needed for software tests. Finally, we propose some items of software tests and give a frame in the case of function blocks.