Acyclic Traffic Management in EtherCAT Networks: Novel Adaptive Grouping and Telegram Assignment Mechanism

Recent advances in industrial, railway, and in-vehicle communications demand network architectures that ensure low latency, high synchronization, and efficient bandwidth utilization. While Ethernet for Control Automation Technology (EtherCAT) effectively handles real-time cyclic traffic, managing non-real-time acyclic traffic, such as Ethernet/IP frames, remains challenging. Existing Ethernet-over-EtherCAT (EoE) schemes struggle to balance these traffic types, resulting in inefficient bandwidth use and increased latency under high network loads. To overcome these challenges, we propose an adaptive grouping mechanism for acyclic secondary devices, coupled with a dynamic telegram assignment method, to optimize bandwidth utilization and reduce delay for acyclic traffic without compromising the performance of the cyclic secondary devices traffic. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our approach reduces packet delay and increases bandwidth utilization, even in networks with a large number of acyclic secondary devices. Specifically, the simulation results reveal that our approach achieves up to a 99% reduction in the mean packet delay and significantly enhances bandwidth utilization, making it suitable for complex industrial applications where high performance and scalability are essential. This work offers a practical solution for advancing EtherCAT's capability to support diverse traffic types in demanding communication environments.