GigE Vision®

What is GigE Vision?

GigE Vision® is a camera interface standard that uses the Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) communication protocol.

This international standard ensures full interoperability between compliant products from different vendors.

What are the benefits?

The GigE Vision standard benefits everyone involved in the design, deployment, and maintenance of video applications by:

• Allowing Ethernet-based vision products from different vendors to interoperate seamlessly, without time-consuming and costly integration issues.
• Making it easier to leverage the native performance attributes of the Ethernet platform, such as its networking flexibility, scalability, high throughput, long-distance reach, and full-duplex, dedicated connections.
• Making it simpler to implement applications on affordable and widely available Ethernet network elements, such as switches, network interface chips/cards, and Cat-5/6 or fiber cabling.
• Delivering a standardized environment for the delivery of new-generation, networked video applications based on switched Ethernet architectures.

When was it established?

The standard was founded in 2003 and officially launched in May 2006.

The standard is now considered mature and most of the world's leading hardware and software vendors for industrial video have unveiled GigE Vision-compliant products.

How is it managed?

The GigE Vision standard is administered by the Automated Imaging Association (AIA), a non-profit trade association for the machine vision industry based in Michigan, U.S.

The AIA publishes the GigE Vision standard text and oversees the compliance process. Technical evolution is handled by the AIA's GigE Vision Technical Committee, made up of representatives from every major sector of the vision systems industry.

What is Pleora's role?

Pleora co-founded the GigE Vision initiative in 2003 and still plays a critical role in defining and shaping its evolution.

A Pleora representative serves as Vice-Chair of the AIA GigE Vision Standard Committee and Pleora makes significant contributions to all of the standard's technical subcommittees. Pleora chaired the subcommittee that drafted Version 1.2 of the standard, and is tasked with developing key initiatives within Version 2.0 of the standard. It also leads the development of the automated GigE Vision Validation Framework for GigE Vision devices.

Technical summary

The GigE Vision standard is a comprehensive document that defines how compliant products interact to deliver video and control information over Ethernet networks. It has the following four main elements:

• Device discovery: defines the sequence of events required for compliant devices to obtain valid Internet Protocol addresses, and for control applications to discover compliant devices.
• GigE Vision control protocol (GVCP): defines how to specify video stream channels and control and configure compliant devices.
• GigE Vision stream protocol (GVSP): defines how images are packetized and provides mechanisms for cameras or other types of video transmission systems to send image data and other information to compliant receivers.
• An extensible mark-up language (XML) description file: provides the equivalent of a computer-readable data sheet of features in compliant devices. This file must be based on the schema defined by the European Machine Vision Association's GenICam™ standard and include seven basic features.

The most recent version of GigE Vision, Version 1.2, allows a wide range of Ethernet-connected software and hardware products to be registered as GigE Vision-compliant offerings. They must fall under one or more of the following categories:

1. An application that functions as the master of a GVCP control channel.
2. A device controlled by GVCP.
3. A GVSP-compliant video transmitter.
4. A GVSP-compliant video receiver.

The diagram below illustrates some of the products covered by this classification system. The products in the video source section, for example, would fall into categories 2 and 3, while the software-based video processing unit would fall into 2, 3, and 4.

To learn more

More information about this vision standard and how interoperability can benefit a vision system’s networked video design and performance is happily shared by our GigE Vision experts simply by contacting us.