What is EtherCAT?

EtherCAT is an open protocol enabling the data communication in automation systems, which was developed by the ETG (EtherCAT Technology Group) with significant contribution of the company Beckhoff.

EtherCAT represents a Class C Industrial Ethernet that carries data in a summation frame protocol with a time-controlled network access in standard IEEE 802.3 frames. Since the data is processed "on the fly" in hardware, EtherCAT has fast bus cycle times (< 100 µs) while maintaining a high data throughput. For applications with high consistency and synchronization demands (< 1 µs) appropriate mechanisms are available. As standard the CANopen object model is used for managing the data.