Design of configurable network controller between Ethernet and EtherCAT

Ethernet based network protocol replaces fieldbus systems due to its high speed, safety, and extendibility. At the system level, use of an additional network requires effort to implement the new environment. The user has to analyze and organize two networks. This paper proposes FPGA based network controller between Ethernet and EtherCAT. It does not incur additional cost and effort. As it is based on Xilinx Microblaze, the user can add internal IP, and thus it is flexible.