HART Simulator

Introduction

Simulation is considered to be an enabler of network security, developing network management algorithms, industrial IT security, etc. Any industrial plant floor deploys tens and hundreds of field devices that collectively form a factory-wide OT network. All these field devices could encounter complex operational scenarios which if not handled properly can cause a serious impact on the OT network health and security. In order to address these issues beforehand, the OEMs and system integrators simulate the physical plant environment in a lab to test, verify, validate, and resolve various potential issues.

uSimulate HART: Utthunga’s HART Device Simulator

uSimulate HART has been developed on top of Utthunga’s proven simulation framework, uSimulate. uSimulate helps simulate communication protocols, field devices, control systems, process flow, and network traffic. uSimulate HART simulates HART slave devices. This hardware simulator plays a vital role in the verification of host systems such as DCS, AMS, calibrators, configurators, also enables operator training.

A few highlights of uSimulate HART are:

• Provides a simple and intuitive web-based user interface to configure the settings
• Ability to simulate data in various patterns (linear, sinusoidal, constant, unit step, random) with applicable lower and upper limits
• Faults can be created
• Can simulate slave devices having a combination of HART protocol revision 5, 6, 7
• Simulates single or multiple HART slave devices simultaneously (depends on the configuration)
• All Universal commands are supported as per HART specification
• Common Practice commands that are supported by the slave devices can be configured
• The channels are loop powered
• Provides channel to channel isolation
• Each channel can be configured as either analog input or analog output device
• Logs are created and displayed in the web application to monitor data flow and to identify any error conditions during simulation
• Four variables (PV, SV, QV, and TV) can be configured for each device

Architecture

Use Cases of uSimulate HART

uSimulate HART is extremely useful in the following application areas:

Verification of Control Systems, AMS Systems, Configurators, Calibrators, Diagnostic/Test and Measurement Equipment

uSimulate HART can be used for verifying the interoperability across various HART versions and device types. Various features like safety functions, event notifications, and alarms make uSimulate HART a preferred choice for verifying performance, scalability, response time, etc., of the host systems.

Training & Education

uSimulate HART can be a suitable use case for operational training and situational preparedness activities.