Cable Construction for Machine Vision Connectivity

Along with the onslaught of Internet of Things (IoT) and wirelessly enabled devices, cloud connectivity has become a major benefit for a range of applications from commercial to military. As of 2018, Ethernet networking surpassed Fieldbus technology in industrial settings (Figure 1). This is partly due to the growth of industrial IoT (IIoT) where the central gateway to all the sensor nodes is necessarily connected to the cloud via a hardwired Ethernet connection. In industrial settings, power over Ethernet (PoE) links can serve cameras for machine vision, to sensors for multi-modal processing capabilities. This article overviews industrial Ethernet, some of its major pain points including networking dynamics, and cable construction specific to industrial applications.