Hands-On Industrial Internet of Things

Weaknesses of the fieldbus setup

The weaknesses of fieldbus setup are as follows:

• There is strong coupling with the controllers. The direct connection with the controllers forces the edge to implement and maintain a connector for each fieldbus protocol. This means it is susceptible to the previously discussed disadvantages.
• There is no a single PLC or DCS that controls the whole industrial plant. A PLC concentrator, like a DCS, controls just a single area of the plant. The related control networks are not linked with each other by design as they are deterministic networks. This would also make them vulnerable to security breaches. As we saw in the previous chapters, their information is joined and merged at a higher level by the SCADA and ...