The most basic type of communication is unidirectional communication, where a safety application on one device (Figure 29: Controller A) sends data to a safety application on another device (Figure 29: Controller B).
Figure 29 – Unidirectional Communication
This is accomplished by placing a SafetyProvider on Controller A and a SafetyConsumer on Controller B. The connection between SafetyProvider and SafetyConsumer can be established and terminated during runtime, allowing different consumers to connect to the same SafetyProvider at different times. Furthermore, the protocol is designed in such a way, that the SafetyConsumer needs to know the parametrized set of IDs of the SafetyProvider such that it is able to safely check whether the received data is coming from the expected source. On the other hand, as safety data flows in one direction only, there is no need for the SafetyProvider to check the ID of the SafetyConsumers. Hence, Controller A can – one after another – serve an arbitrarily large number of SafetyConsumers, and new SafetyConsumers can be introduced into the system without having to update controller A.