TCP/IP Based Control and Automation of Temperature Process

Objectives: In the present scenario, modern Industrial and Commercial Systems require communication networks to exchange information between spatially distributed communicating equipments. The challenge for researches in this area is to compensate for transmission delay, packet loss and manage network traffic. This paper focuses on design of controllers for one such application where the process and the controller communicate through Ethernet via TCP/IP protocol. Methods/Analysis: Different control strategies for temperature control in Networked control System, is analyzed and the performance of Conventional and Model based controllers over the network was compared in terms of performance metrics like settling time and peak-overshoot. The transmission delay was deliberately introduced into the system and the controller performance was analysed for different traffic levels by introducing imaginary nodes in the network. The simulation was done using LabVIEW. Findings: The obtained results prove that Model based controllers perform better in networked environment, offering faster settling time and reduced peak overshoots. Conclusion: The network delay and traffic introduced into the process disturbs the stability of the system, but the control strategies adopted in this work offers better performance and maintain the stability of the system.