Avnet Abacus and EBV Elektronik supporting leading industrial customers to bring Single Pair Ethernet to market

Avnet Abacus is one of Europe’s leading interconnect, passive, electro-mechanical and power distributors and is a regional business unit of Avnet; and EBV Elektronik is the leading specialist in European semiconductor distribution and is an Avnet company.

Single Pair Ethernet, or SPE, is an important emerging technology that can contribute to converged end-to-end data communications in the industrial IoT (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 paradigm. In addition to enabling the seamless flow of Ethernet packets between field devices and factory enterprise-level equipment to provide enhanced process control, the technology offers further advantages including lighter and more flexible cables with lower space requirement and assembly costs than that required by conventional multi-pair Ethernet cabling.

Both Avnet companies have been supporting automation and IIoT customers in their SPE product development activities and are at the forefront of driving and supporting activities and initiatives in the SPE arena. For example, Avnet Abacus and EBV Elektronik are members of the SPE System Alliance and the SPE Industrial Partner Network, respectively, which are two major industry initiatives that have been created to support the development of the ecosystem and standards – and specifically the connector interface for industrial and process automation – to help the greater penetration of the technology across the target applications and markets.

“The combination of Avnet Abacus and EBV offers a unique proposition for industrial automation customers,” said Karl Lehnhoff, Director Segment Industrial, Scientific & Medical at EBV Elektronik. “Not only can we offer a

well-developed ecosystem of suppliers and products from connector and cables to passives, semiconductors and PHY devices, but also the ability to advise customers comprehensively and provide high levels of support to meet SPE challenges as they arise.”

“Working with either EBV or Avnet Abacus means customers will always receive the full picture with information and assistance on all the challenges relating to SPE, regardless of their possible connection to either of the two industry consortiums,” added Alfons Brombierstaeudl, Senior Area Technical Manager Interconnect & Electromechanical at Avnet Abacus. “Automation engineers will have all the necessary building blocks via the Avnet one-stop shop to bring SPE into their application and quickly to market.”