Abstract

Real-time distributed control and simulation systems have broad applications in automotive, aerospace and industrial automation industries. Ethernet is the most popular network standard in the world because it is simple, fast, and cost-effective with its rapid evolution of new technology. However, it does not support real-time communication. This thesis investigates the possibility of adding a higher-level TDMA protocol to Ethernet to provide real-time capability so that it can provide a cost-effective solution for real-time distributed systems. The thesis describes the design and implementation of an Ethernet based real-time distributed system framework including real-time driver development, a general testing and verification method, an accurate clock synchronization method and a TDMA protocol on Ethernet. The new approach is verified with experiments to demonstrate the performance of Ethernet based real-time distributed systems.