HARTING Single Pair Ethernet technology communicates via two wires

IEC 63171-6 specifies the Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) interface "Industrial Style" as proposed by the HARTING Technology Group and is the future standard interface for industrial SPE applications.

March 2020 saw the North American launch of a breakthrough technology that the HARTING Technology Group has been working on since 2015. The corporation, which leads the world in power connection and more, announced the creation of the new Single Pair Ethernet technology. This new innovation communicates across the common industrial Ethernet protocols that are available today – like Ethernet/IP, Profinet, and EtherCAT – but achieves this across only two wires.

Five years in the making

For five years, HARTING has been driving the creation of this technology for the industrial marketplace, along with other industrial organizations and global standards bodies, including IEC and IEEE. Unlike past solutions, which required using four or eight total wires for communication, Single Pair Ethernet technology communicates through a single twisted pair.

The Single Pair solution also uses Power over Data Line, or PoDL, technology to bring not just communication to the device, but also the voltage and amperage necessary to power the device itself. There are three significant advantages to this design:

• a substantial reduction in the space and number of connections on the device;
• elimination of the need for an external power supply; and
• network consistency: now, devices on a facility floor that have traditionally communicated over Fieldbus protocols can join the same IP-based network that the rest of the network devices are using.

Major benefits of the last point include peer-to-peer communication, open-loop feedback of all devices, and smart functionality from the main control room to the device.

HARTING plans to contribute several components to the SPE ecosystem, and the core product will be the T1 connector system. The T1 has been chosen as the standard mating face for Industrial Single Pair Ethernet technology.

This device ranges from IP20 to IP67; there are currently metric variants, M8 and M12, with further variants on the product road map. The mating interface was designed to be the same and interoperable across all IP ratings, to be compatible with all industrial applications and serve as the standard.

The HARTING T1 series is anticipated to be released this year.

For more information, contact HARTING.

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