TRANSFERRING ARBITRARY BINARY DATA OVER A FIELDBUS NETWORK

摘要

A data transfer system utilizes one or more standard parameters in a fieldbus messaging system (10) as a mechanism to move arbitrarily large blocks of arbitrary binary data into and out of a field device (12, 15, 16). The preferred embodiment of the invention moves delineated streams of octets across a virtual connection to arid from the device by layering and tunneling, utilizing the underlying fieldbus network as a transport mechanism. These octet sequences are referred to as VStreams TM. One or more devices (12, 15, 16) on the fieldbus network may have one or more VStreams TM active simultaneously, in either direction. Preferably, a standard multi-byte parameter supported by the fieldbus is defined for use as a window, preferably as large as the underlying fieldbus will allow. Writes to this parameter are interpreted as sequential transfers of data in to the field device (12, 15, 16). Reads from this parameter are interpreted as sequential transfers of data out of the field device (12, 15, 16).