New redundant bus couplers for the Axioline P remote I/O system

The Axioline P product family from Phoenix Contact enables standard and intrinsically safe (Ex i) input/output signals to be acquired via redundant Modbus/TCP bus couplers. Installed in Ex zone 2, the devices enable the signals of the input/output modules to be connected directly from Ex zones 0, 1, or 2.

The innovative Modbus redundancy in the remote I/O station adds an additional function to the robust Axioline P platform in terms of high availability. The system can be configured with two bus couplers, each with its own IP address for client/server communication using a redundancy management function block. The bus couplers perform redundancy switching internally in the firmware and therefore do not require any additional software. When the bus coupler is switched, there is neither a loss of data nor an interruption in communication with the controller.

The I/O station can be configured easily via an integrated web server. All connected Axioline P input/output modules can be configured without external software. In addition to the function described above, the high availability of the system is achieved by a redundant backplane and the capability of hot-swapping I/O modules. In this case, the replacement modules installed during operation do not need to be configured.