A Novel Time Independent Asynchronous Communication Protocol & Its Applications

This paper proposes a novel communications protocol called time independent asynchronous (TIA) communications. This protocol constitutes a new category which has unique properties very useful in a variety of applications including embedded controller communications. The 2-wire TIA communications system proposed is implemented using software controlled IO. Analysis of this system shows that traditional signal transition graphs (STGs) may fail to predict livelock and deadlock in software based systems. A modified form of STG called STG for threads (STG-FT) is proposed to better model the behaviour of software driven systems and is shown to correctly detect livelock and deadlock that a normal STG model may miss. The performance of the new 2-wire TIA system is reported and livelock and deadlock properties found to match the STG-FT simulation. The new 2-wire TIA communication system has particular application to communications in products and industrial systems with low end microprocessors and any microprocessor that is heavily loaded with time critical applications