Multicast is defined as sending the same set of data from one device (Controller A) to several other devices (Controller B1, B2,…,BN) simultaneously.

Figure B.3 – Safety multicast

Safety multicast is accomplished by placing multiple SafetyProviders on Controller A, and one SafetyConsumer on each of the Controllers B1, B2, … BN. Each of the SafetyProviders running on Controller A is connecting to one of the SafetyConsumers running on one of the Controllers B1, B2, … BN. See Figure B.3 for an example.

The safety protocol in this document is designed in such a way that:

• the state machine of the SafetyProvider has a low number of states, and thus very low memory demands,
• all safety-related message-checks are executed on the consumer and thus the computational demand on the SafetyProvider is low.

Therefore, even if many SafetyProviders are instantiated on a device, the performance requirements will still be moderate.

The properties of simple unicast are also valid for safety multicast; different sets of consumers can connect to SafetyProviders at different times, and new SafetyConsumers can be introduced into the system without having to reconfigure the SafetyProvider instances. As all SafetyProvider instances send the same safety application data (the same data source), it is irrelevant from a safety point of view to which SafetyProvider instance a given SafetyConsumer is connected. Thus, all SafetyProvider instances can be parametrized with the same set of IDs for the SafetyProvider.