Supporting Hard Real-time Communication of Periodic Messages over Switched Ethernet

Nowadays, switched Ethernet is considered as an attractive enabling technology for supporting industrial communication needs. However, because of some disadvantages, switched Ethernet requires some mechanisms for supporting real-time communication, which is the most important challenge in industrial communication. This paper suggests and proves the schedulability condition for hard real-time periodic messages on a switched Ethernet that are scheduled under EDF-based scheduling algorithm without any modification of original switches, thus they can be applied directly to industrial communication. The switched Ethernet operates based on the master-slaves principles and the synchronized model, and the transmission of real-time periodic messages will be handled by master node to fulfil their hard real-time requirements.