Network-Based Control System Supports Dual Connection to DNP3 Clients

March 5, 2013
System has been enhanced to make better use of the functions supported by the DNP3 protocol.

Yokogawa Electric Corp. has released an enhanced version of the Stardom network-based control system. The system has been designed to enhance the integrity of the data transferred between supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in challenging upstream oil and gas and other applications.

The FCN autonomous controller and the FCN-RTU low-power controller are core components of the Stardom network-based control system, which is widely used in applications involving the monitoring and control of oil and gas fields, water supply facilities and other installations that are often hundreds of kilometers apart. In such applications, the controllers installed at each site send data via a narrowband communications link to the SCADA system at a central control facility. To ensure that no data is lost, such systems generally employ DNP3, an open distributed network communications protocol. The Stardom system has been enhanced to make better use of the functions supported by the DNP3 protocol.

With this enhancement, the FCN and FCN-RTU controllers now support a dual connection to DNP3 clients, enabling the same data to be sent to master and backup SCADA systems (the DNP3 clients) at the same time. When the same essential data is stored on master and backup SCADA servers in separate locations, the system can switch over to the backup SCADA server in the event of a disaster or some other eventuality that causes the master SCADA server to go offline. This disaster-recovery system ensures the uninterrupted monitoring and control of oil and gas fields, water supply facilities and other types of infrastructure.