The basic structure of DCS consists of four levels: field level, control level, monitoring level, and management level:

1. The field level mainly includes various process channel cards or modules.

2. The control level includes all process stations.

3. The monitoring level includes auxiliary equipment such as engineer station, operator station, history station and printer.

4. The management level includes management computers.

5. The corresponding communication network in the middle of the fourth layer is composed of a control network, a monitoring network, and a management network.