| Title |
Cycle Time Improvement of EtherCAT Networks Using Linux Kernel Space Application Module |
| Authors |
박성문(Sung-Mun Park) ; 최준영(Joon-Young Choi) |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5370/KIEE.2020.69.1.184 |
| Keywords |
EtherCAT; Cycle time; Linux; Kernel module |
| Abstract |
We propose a method to improve the cycle time of EtherCAT networks by implementing the EtherCAT application as a kernel space application module. Commonly, the EtherCAT application has been implemented as an application program in the user space of Linux, which causes time-consuming memory copies of EtherCAT frames between the kernel and user space and deteriorates the performance of cycle time. In order to deal with this problem, we move the EtherCAT application from the user space to the kernel space by implementing the EtherCAT application as a kernel space application module. Consequently, the time-consuming memory copies are prevented between the kernel and user space, and the performance of cycle time is significantly improved. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method by performing experiments using an EtherCAT network composed of the off-the-shelf slaves and IgH EtherCAT master for Linux. The experimental results confirm that the cycle time is significantly improved, which verifies the effect of the master application implementation in the kernel space. |