Shared medium communication for distributed discrete event control

The synthesis of efficient distributed discrete-event controllers that are potentially implemented in networked controller devices has been extensively studied in recent years. However, different from the controller synthesis, the realization of such controllers on a network requires the additional consideration of timing issues due to the communication. To this end, we present a communication model including real-time requirements for the operation of distributed discrete-event controllers. Furthermore, we propose a deterministic real-time communication operation of the distributed controllers according to this communication model, and state a sufficient condition for the network bandwidth such that the formulated real-time requirements are satisfied. Our operation is evaluated with a simulation study and compared to the nondeterministic behavior of the standard Ethernet.