Industrial Ethernet: Packet Switching Replacement for SDH Telecommunications Network in Oil& Gas Ind.

Pipelines as important and as critical as the ones in oil and gas industries always should be monitored and controlled using a control system. This control system requires a complete telecommunication network. In our country such telecommunications networks are industry specific and are implemented using Fiber Optic Cables or Microwave Radio (MWR) links as physical backbone. Traditional telecommunications networks in oil and gas industries, especially pipeline support networks are based on TDM technologies like PDH in older networks and SDH/SONET in the more contemporary networks. In the last years more sophisticated and faster protocols such as OTN has been introduced and used in telecommunication industry.Recently it has been considered to use Packet Switching networks instead of TDM based networks in oil and gas industry specific networks. Ethernet is the one technology used in office LANs and Internet. Industrialized Ethernet Switches (IES) are the solution proposed in this paper. Industrial Ethernet Network (IEN) is different from standard Ethernet network in the means of equipment physical characteristics and enhanced routing and protection algorithms and interfaces. Here in this paper we shall describe each technology and will compare their respective benefits and pitfalls.

Keywords:

Packet Switching , SDH/SONET , OTN , TDM , IEN , IES