Section 2
IEC 60870-5-103 overview
2.1
IEC 60870-5-103 standard
IEC 60870-5-103 is defined as a companion standard for the informative element of
protection equipment. While the official IEC 60870-5-103 standard dates back to
1997, the protocol has its roots in the VDEW6 communication protocol from the late
1980’s. A VDEW6 device can be seen as a subset of an IEC 60870-5-103 device but
not the opposite.
IEC 60870-5-103 defines communication for a serial, unbalanced link only.
Communication speeds are defined as either 9600 or 19200 baud.
Standard documentation
This manual assumes that the reader has some basic knowledge of the IEC
60870-5-103 protocol and the standard IEC 60870 documents relating to the protocol.
Table 1:
Standard IEC 60870 documents relating to IEC 60870-5-103
IEC 60870
document part
Description
5-1
Transmission frame formats
5-2
Link transmission procedures
5-3
General structure of application data
5-4
Definition and coding of application information elements
5-5
Basic application functions
5-6
Conformance testing guidelines
5-103
Companion standard for the informative interface of protection equipment.
The IEC 60870-5-1…6 parts are also used in communication protocols like IEC
60870-5-101 and IEC 60870-5-104.
Interoperability and interchangeability
An IEC 60870-5-103 device can be interoperable and interchangeable or only
interoperable. Interoperability means that any required application data in the device,
which can be coded into an IEC 60870-5-103 data type, can be mapped into the IEC
60870-5-103 address space. This data is recognized by any IEC 60870-5-103 master.
Interchangeability means supporting the application data (informative elements)
whose semantics are pre-defined by the IEC 60870-5-103 standard. However, only a
very limited set of application data informative elements has been defined by the
standard. It should also be noticed that these sets of data are mainly defined for a
1MRS759001 A
Section 2
IEC 60870-5-103 overview
615 series
7
Communication Protocol Manual