Arndt Lüder and Jörn Peschke, Otto-von-Guericke University,
Ricardo Sanz, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

Within industrial automation the architectural trend goes in the direction of distributed control systems with distributed decision making based on distributed intelligence. Several approaches have been made in that direction resulting in a set of different applicable structures and architectures. Within the different levels of control the different structures will provide the possibility to investigate similar structures and to deduce general design pattern for distributed control systems on the different levels. For the level of field control systems this deduction is made in this article.

Keywords: Distributed control applications / Design patterns / IEC 61499 / Distributed field control systems / Reusability of control software

Automation Technology in Practice, Vol. 3, 2006