Method and equipment for transferring multi-channel information into single channel safety information

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and to an apparatus, which has been adapted to carry out the method, for the coupling of a safety-critical process from a safe environment, which has at least two redundant processing channels, to an environment which is not safe or to an environment which is safe but has fewer processing channels. To this end, provision is made of a method which processes a data record which is relevant to the safety-critical process, in particular on a protocol-specific basis, to form a respective safe protocol ( 14, 24 ) using at least two redundant processing channels ( 1, 2 ) in accordance with identical laws, and forms a common safe protocol taking into account at least two redundant safe coupling protocols ( 14, 24 ), to be precise by accessing a common (buffer) register ( 30 ) using each of the processing channels ( 1, 2 ), in which case a write authorization is allocated only once for each register location, and, when writing at least elements ( 14 ') of the common safety-based protocol using a processing channel ( 1 ) with write authorization, at least one further processing channel ( 2 ) is first of all used to check ( 25 ) whether these elements ( 14 ') are identical to one another, and access to the common buffer register for the purpose of storing these elements is enabled only when they are identical to one another.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to a method and a device suitable for carrying out the method for coupling safety-related processes from a secure multi-channel environment to an unsafe and / or environment with fewer channels, in particular for safety-related Single-channel bus connection for the process. Background technique [0002] In the following, the expression "safety-relevant or safety-critical process" means a process in which a failure, when occurring, results in a non-negligible danger to humans and / or also to economic goods. In a safety-related process, it must therefore be ensured with ideally 100% safety that when a fault exists, this process, the next process connected to this process, and / or the entire system including this process is transferred to a safe state. Thus, such safety-relevant processes can also be sub-processes of a larger superordinate overall process. Examples of safety-relevant processes are chemical processes where critical para...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Therefore, its disadvantage is in particular that the total data length of the safety-based message is extremely large relative to the actual useful data, and therefore the data transmission rate for the actual useful data is very low, because for each useful data item to be transmitted, a Two identical useful data items and respective redundant information for each identical useful data item

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