Time-Triggered Fieldbus Networks – State of the Art and Future Applications (Invited Paper)

The time-triggered paradigm encompasses a set of con-cepts and principles that support the design of dependable real-time systems. By using the properties of physical time and the mechanism of clock synchronization, coordinated interaction between distributed nodes can be facilitated. This paper briefly explains the time-triggered approach, de-fines a taxonomy for real-time requirements and discusses seven protocols that provide time-triggered features. Fi-nally, two application examples are given that show the po-tential of the time-triggered approach. 1