icECAT.

EtherCAT Network Simulator

The EtherCAT network simulator supports the development and testing of control applications, especially when no physical EtherCAT slave devices are available.

The simulator can also be used for simulating error conditions at application level (e.g. error simulation in the process data) and thus for testing the behavior of a control application.

Suitable for integration in your own engineering tool or on the target system running the EtherCAT Master Stack
No runtime licenses

Functional principle

The icECAT EtherCAT Network Simulation Library is a portable library for setting up a software-in-the-loop (SiL) simulation of an EtherCAT network. It offers a simple solution for testing the business logic of an EtherCAT master control application.

The simulated EtherCAT network topology is defined by an ENI file. The library simulates the EtherCAT behavior of slaves, i.e. it is possible to achieve the OPERATIONAL state of the master for the given slave devices without further simulation of an application logic.

Architecture

The network simulator is designed as a passive library that can be linked to an application with the icECAT master stack.

A special link layer driver (ETHLL) is used. Switching between the real and simulated network can be realized in the control application.

The simulation logic can be implemented via callbacks that can be registered on certain events, e.g. ESM state transition, or updating the process image (EtherCAT slave PDI interrupt). Alternatively, the process data can be accessed multi-threaded at any time using access functions.

The simulation application can run in an engineering environment (e.g. on Microsoft Windows), in an automated test environment (e.g. on a Linux server) or on the target system (e.g. Embedded Linux).

To the » software architecture diagram

Features

Simulation of the network topology and the EtherCAT slave devices

Definition of the EtherCAT network topology by an ENI file
Simulation of the EtherCAT State Machine of the slaves devices
Access to the simulated ESC RAM of the slave devices is possible, callbacks can be registered

Simulation of process data (PDOs)

Access to PDOs in the context of the cyclic frame processing and at any time “from outside”

Simulation of EtherCAT mailbox protocols

Simulation of the CoE mailbox communication
SDO upload / download to a simulated object dictionary of a slave device, callbacks for the simulation application
Simulation of the state machine of CiA402 slave devices (control word, status word)

Simulation timing

The simulation can be executed in real time, in fast motion or without time reference. A cycle time of up to 100 μs is possible (depending on the network size and simulation environment) for the real-time simulation.

API for the simulation of the slave behavior

Access to simple simulated CoE object dictionary
Callbacks for interactions with the slave (EtherCAT state change, SDO transfer, etc.)
Adaptation of external simulation tools is possible on the basis of the programming interface

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