The development of fieldbus technology is reflected in two aspects: the development of high-speed fieldbus technology and the continued improvement and development of low-speed fieldbus technology.
Currently, fieldbus products are primarily designed for low-speed bus applications, used in fields with lower operating speeds and less stringent network performance requirements. High-speed fieldbuses, on the other hand, are mainly used for interconnecting control networks, connecting control computers, high-speed processing devices, and facilitating connections between low-speed fieldbus networks. They are essential for fully realizing a distributed control architecture. However, the high-speed fieldbus technology is still relatively weak in this area.
Overall, automation systems and equipment will shift towards a fieldbus architecture, moving towards greater openness and unification. However, a single fieldbus architecture cannot accommodate only one standard, and driven by commercial interests, various fieldbus technologies are developing in a highly competitive market environment. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that in the near future, devices based on centralized bus standards will be interconnected through routing gateways and achieve information sharing.
The development of mature distributed control systems (DCS) involves both continuous updates to hardware and software technologies and the development of higher-level information management systems to meet the needs of enterprise development. From a hardware perspective, DCS systems of this period connected system management modules to network nodes and added inter-network connectors. Later, DCS systems more organically integrated process control, supervisory control, and management scheduling. Their characteristics included integration, openness, and field-level intelligence. After the 1990s, with the rapid development of communication technology, semiconductor integration technology, and other technologies, as well as the increasing demands for control and management, a new generation of DCS systems emerged.
