The P6008 protocol is a proprietary software product developed by the Italian company Nuovo Pignone (now GE) which enables the coupling of Nuovo Pignone RTUs with their control systems.

Telegrams can be encoded in binary mode. In practice, binary code is hardly ever used as this causes problems with respect to the modem control lines making it difficult to connect standard PCs. Handshake signals are used to enable efficient recognition of the end of data frames.
In addition there is also the ASCII mode as it was called by Nuovo Pignone. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the ASCII operation mode (STX, ETX...) employed for instance in the ANSI X3.28 protocol. Instead it merely converts and blows up the data volume to twice its size. This does not result in improved timing and end recognition for the reception of data frames.

The data exchange places a heavy workload on the bandwidth and makes use of a rather unconventional solution. There is no spontaneous automatic transmission of data changes, these have to be read out after the respective status messages. Basically, there are 2 request modes: All information can be read out cyclically after a general poll. Or, in order to minimize the burden on the transmission lines, it is better to evaluate the status messages from the RU and then request specific data blocks.

The control station determines which communication mode is applied, it also initiates the complete initialization of the RTUs and the configuration of data point-specific parameters in the RTUs.

ISO/OSI Model

7	Application Layer	P6008 Application Layer
6	Presentation Layer	n/a
5	Session Layer	n/a
4	Transport Layer	n/a
3	Network Layer	n/a
2	Link Layer	n/a
1	Physical Layer	RS232 / V.24 (UART-Conform)

Supported Information Types

Control Direction	Single Command
Control Direction	Setpoint [16 bit]
Monitoring Direction	Single indication [1 Bit]
	Single indication [1 Bit] with time tag
	Measured value [12 bit]
	Counter value [15 bit]

Protocol Features

Physical Layer	RS232 / V.24 (UART-Conform), Half-Duplex possibility of line redundancy
Application Layer	Transmission of pulse commands Transmission of setpoints Transmission of Indications with or without time tag, measurands and counter values relative time tag representation, accuracy 1 ms measurands may contain additional validity-, alarm- and overflow bits General Interrogation Request of given Indications, Measurands or Counters is possible Request of Indication and Measurand blocks is possible Transmission of initialisation and configuration data to the rtu up to 63 RTUs on 1 serial line
Address Space	rtu's per line: 63 Indications for each rtu: 1024 Measurands for each rtu: 127 Counters for each rtu: 64 Commands for each rtu: 256 Setpoints for each rtu: 64

Implemented Protocol Stacks

P6008, Master

P6008, Slave

Applicable Products

ipConv

Universal protocol converter for highest degree of flexibility
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References

SONELGAZ
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Algeria

ipConv

P6008, Slave / IEC 60870-5-101, Master / IEC 60870-5-101, Slave / P6008, Master /