The RTU with its highly sophisticated communication capabilities can also be used as a communication gateway. A gateway essentially changes one communications protocol to another.
Typically at station level, there may be many communications protocols employed ranging from IEC60870-5-103,SPABUS and the new IEC61850 standard.
The RTU560 when functioning as a gateway will convert station protocols to network protocols and vice versa.
Shifting of centralized communication functions to station level utilizes the available bandwidth more efficiently and reduces the required communication lines at the same time.
The RTU supports many of the international and third party telecontrol mmunications protocols.
Due to the standardized internal interface for system and process information, the integration of a new protocol is easily achieved.
The RTU560 is able to communicate with different hierarchical levels of a network control system.
At station level, the RTU can communicate with sub RTU's or with any other intelligent electronic devices (IED's).
The RTU time management system synchronizes the RTU with the supplied absolute time with a high degree of accuracy. The absolute accuracy is mainly provided by the source for synchronization used,whereby GPS,DCF 77 and IRIG-B allow an accuracy of 5 ms and better.
The RTU architecture is totally distributed both in hardware software and ommunications interfaces.Software applications can be distributed over a number of different communications units (CMU Boards).
This is possible due to an internal communication concept that keeps all CMU boards informed about the contents of the process data interface.
There is one process and system database which is available in adapted copies for each CMU board.
The internal communication system ensures that all process data is consistent.
The different CMU boards run the communication tasks for the connected serial links.
This allows the type and number of different communication links running on one CMU board to be defined.
System performance is defined by the configuration of the CMU boards.