A framework based on CLR virtual machine to deploy IEC 61131-3 programs

The need to deploy IEC 61131-3 — based application on multiple target platforms is becoming more and more urgent at this moment. The increased need of flexibility of automation systems and the increased capabilities of sensors and actuators paired with more capable bus systems, pave the way for the reallocation of applications, such as control loops, away from the field level into so-called compute pools. Such compute pools are decentralised with enough compute power for a large number of applications, while providing the required flexibility to quickly adapt to changes of the applications requirements. The aim of the paper is propose a framework able to deploy IEC 61131-3-based application to multiple computing platforms. It is based on CLR VM and does not require any modifications on the IEC 61131-3 applications; all additional overhead is handled by the framework here defined. As applications in the automation domain often come with real-time requirements, the paper presents also an analysis about the capability of the proposed solution to respect typical real-time constraints in factory automation.