SUPERVISION OF A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

摘要

The present invention is concerned with a stability supervision or monitoring of a communication system of an industrial Process Control (PC) system, by measuring the communication load and comparing the latter to a previously established base load. The measured communication load is represented by a plurality of updated, or present, echo delay measurements for communication paths between a supervising Intelligent Electronic Device IED and end-IEDs of the communication system. The echo delays are established by sending, by the supervising IED, echo poll messages to the end-IEDs, and by receiving an echo from the end-IEDs. If a difference between measured and baseline echo delays exceeds a predetermined threshold, an overload status is signalled to an operator. Hence, a refined dynamic communication network status, beyond a mere binary good/bad indication, is obtained without additional hardware and excessive dedicated communication load.