FOUNDATION FIELDBUS INTEROPERABILITY TESTING

Foundation Fieldbus is a known as the smart protocol that is a combination of
digital communication simultaneously superimposed on a conventional 4-20mA
signal [IJ. Back to the past of the fieldbus, there were a problem on lack of
interoperability occurred. There were so many different protocols in the market and
the product could only work with other product from the same vendor. PETRONAS
as the established company will apply this fieldbus technology in its plants. A
Foundation Fieldbus system is already been installed at level 1, building 23 in
University Technology PETRONAS. With collaboration from vendors from
Emerson, Honeywell, Yokogawa, and Foxboro, PETRONAS team and UTP students,
a Foundation Fieldbus Interoperability Testing will be conducted. The objectives of
the testing are to get a PETRONAS Technical Standard on the Foundation Fieldbus
system and come out with a report on the results from interoperability testing that will
be the reference for system in PETRONAS. In order to achieve the objectives above,
three different tests will be done through the Foundation Fieldbus Interoperability
Testing which is Basic Interoperability Test, Stress Test and Diagnostic Capability.
The results and data will be recorded. Due to the time constraint, the UTP team only
managed to complete the Basic Interoperability Test until February 2009. The other
two tests will be complete by the next group of UTP team. In the next chapter, there
will be a detail on the training and procedure of the different system conducted by
Emerson, Foxboro, Y okogawa and Honeywell, in order to proceed with the
interoperability test. But the author will only focus on the Honeywell system. At the
same time, there will be information on the Foundation Fieldbus architecture.