What is EtherCAT?
EtherCAT is an open real-time Ethernet Master/Slave network developed by Beckhoff. Today, it is an open standard, managed by the EtherCAT technology group.
EtherCAT is a high-performance Ethernet network supporting a simple low cost line structure, a tree structure, daisy chaining or drop lines. Alternatively the classic switched star topology can be used.
The EtherCAT transmission method is similar to the principles of Interbus. With EtherCAT, the Ethernet packet is no longer received, then interpreted and process data then copied at every device. The EtherCAT slave devices read the data addressed to them while the frame passes through the device node.
Similarly, input data is inserted while the telegram passes through. The frames are only delayed by a few nanoseconds. Since an EtherCAT frame comprises the data of many devices both in send and receive direction, the usable data rate increases to over 90%.
