Switched real-time Ethernet in industrial applications - deadline partitioning

This paper presents work on a switched Ethernet network extended to allow for periodic real-time traffic, using earliest deadline first (EDF) scheduling. A scheme of asymmetrically dividing deadlines of real-time channels between the in and outgoing links to/from the switch is proposed (ADPS). The scheme is compared with the simpler approach of dividing the deadlines in two (SDPS). The results of several software simulations of setting up RT channels over a full-duplex switched Ethernet network are presented. The simulations show that the ADPS performs better than the SDPS when master-slave communication is assumed over the network.