Industrial USB is the name given to the use of the USB protocol

Communications protocol

A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...

 in an industrial

Industry

Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

 environment, for data acquisition

Data acquisition

Data acquisition is the process of sampling signals that measure real world physical conditions and converting the resulting samples into digital numeric values that can be manipulated by a computer. Data acquisition systems typically convert analog waveforms into digital values for processing...

, automation

Automation

Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization...

, and production machine control.

Until recently, USB has been thought of strictly as a consumer communication bus, commonly used for PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

 peripherals. However, its popularity has caused increasing interest for USB in the industrial

Industry

Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

 space. The introduction of USB 2.0, with a transfer rate of 480 Mbit/s, provides a solution for implementing a portable high speed diagnostic system.

Some of the advantages are:

• High-speed transfer rates with USB 2.0 at 480 Mbit/s
• Easy setup due to Plug-and-Play
  Plug-and-play
  In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.Plug...
  
  
• Portability

The difficulties of Industrial USB include:

• Connector strain relief
• Maximum cable length of 5m (with commercially available USB hubs and extenders, it is possible to extend USB up to 30 m or 500 m, respectively)