Measurement Platform for Physical-Layer Analysis of Industrial and Automotive Ethernet

Abstract

Robustness of communication is essential for many automotive and industrial Ethernet applications due to real-time and safety features that are required. Existing data transmission structures have to be used for higher transmission rates in some application. Likewise, some new installation require cost-effective cabling with non-ideal transmission characteristics such as unshielded single twisted pair. This enables economic feasibility of Industrial Internet of Things networking of simple sensors and actors. We introduce a universal platform for physical layer analysis for such physical layers. It covers communication channels up to some 10 Mbit/s, which are typically found in industrial and automotive Ethernet. We present a combined soft- and hardware solution. It comprises an end-to-end communication and facilities spectrum, correlation and constellation analysis. Application to and results for unshielded twisted pair cabling are presented.