ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at several new trends in industry which started to influence the data acquisition and process control field. It introduces the new trends and main contenders contributing to the area. These new trends in the data acquisition and process control field are Networked data acquisition and Fieldbus. Combining Personal Computer (PC) based data acquisition and local area network (LAN) communication technology brings about revolutionary new concepts at a very affordable cost. A local area computer network consists of hardware and a software portion. There have been many networking schemes tried in the past. Out of the many communication methods used, Ethernet and Token Ring Networks have emerged as the two favorite PC LAN methods. A process control workstation needs to have several parts which are: the process window, the configuration window, the maintenance window and the historical data/analyses window. The number of users who want to implement Fieldbus has already reached a critical mass.
