2008-04-21

Power Supply of Remote Terminals on the Field Level via Data Cable

Hirschmann Automation & Control GmbH, Neckartenzlingen, has added three new IP67 switches of the OCTOPUS series to its product portfolio. These switches which have eight or 16 twisted pair ports (100 BASE TX) or 14 twisted pair and two fiber optic uplink ports (100 BASE FX) can transmit both data and current (max. 12.95 W per remote terminal) via one and the same cable. Fast redundancy processes and various security mechanisms are also supported besides in addition to extensive management functions. The switches and all connected remote terminals can also be supplied with any input voltage from 24 V to 110 V DC via two separate IP67 voltage converters. This allows remote terminals on the field level of data networks or in other applications – for example the OCTOPUS switches comply with the European EN 50155 standard for railway vehicles – to be supplied with power under harsh ambient conditions via Power over Ethernet.

The twisted pair ports are designed as 4-pin M12-D connectors and the optional fiber optic uplinks are based on the microFX technology. Eight ports each support Power over Ethernet in the so-called phantom power variant in which the energy is transferred parallel to the data on the same wire pairs of the cable. This allows the use of two-wire cable systems as well.
Since the switches have an integrated power management, the power supply can be set individually per port. The functions which can be managed via SNMP v1, v2 and v3 or TELNET include redundancy mechanisms such as Rapid Spanning Tree and HIPER-Ring, an access control in accordance with IEEE 802.1x, filter possibilities per port as well as flow control with prioritization and traffic shaping.