IEC 61499

The IEC61499 architecture represents a component solution for distributed industrial automation systems aiming at portability, reusability interoperability, reconfiguration of distributed applications. The IEC 61499 Standard provides a generic model for distributed systems. This model includes processes and communication networks as an environment for embedded devices, resources and applications. Applications are built by networks of Function Blocks... In other words, IEC 61499 defines a modeling language that is similar to the old FBs shown in the previous section. This new language is however oriented to distributed systems. Therefore, it allows modeling the whole system, even if it is comprised of smaller parts (i.e., the individual PLCs). FBs are used to completely encapsulate functionality since no global variables are allowed. The application is then created by connecting the individual FBs. Additionally, the standard defines a model to represent the devices in a system and..