ABSTRACT
The time-triggered systems support temporal composability via a precise specification of the interfaces between subsystems, both in the value domain and temporal domain. This chapter explains four fundamental services of a time-triggered communication protocol, namely, clock synchronization, the periodic exchange of state messages, fault isolation, and diagnostic services. The periodic transmission of state messages is triggered by the progression of the global time according to a time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme. A time-triggered communication protocol and the corresponding system architecture need to provide rules for partitioning a system into independent fault containment regions (FCRs). A time-triggered communication system is designed for the periodic exchange of messages carrying state information. The time-triggered communication protocol realizes temporal partitioning and spatial partitioning at the network-level. A time-triggered communication system addresses key issues of replica determinism. Important performance attributes in real-time communication networks are the bandwidth, the network delay, and the variability of the network delay.
