How Can a PLC be integrated with a Fieldbus System?

How Can A Plc Be Integrated With A Fieldbus System? Can The Programming Station For The Plc Be The Same (single Device) As The Engineering Station For Fieldbus?

For IEC or FF protocols, the expectation is that a PLC would be connected at the H2 or HSE (high speed ethernet) level, since it would probably be handling a large quantity of data. A fieldbus engineering station may be directly connected to an individual H1 bus segment, or (better) it may be integrated into a host (“DCS”) device, serving many segments. When HSE is used, this same connection could also be used to program the PLC.

However, even if different software and communication paths must be used, with Windows NT or some similar multi-tasking operating system, there is no reason why a single user interface should not provide both functions.