ETHERCAT

EtherCAT is a real-time Industrial Ethernet technology originally developed by Beckhoff Automation. The EtherCAT protocol which is disclosed in the IEC standard IEC61158 is suitable for hard and soft real-time requirements in automation technology, in test and measurement and many other applications. The main focus during the development of EtherCAT was on short cycle times (≤ 100 µs), low jitter for accurate synchronization (≤ 1 µs) and low hardware costs.