The Rationale for Time-Triggered Ethernet

Time-triggered (TT) Ethernet is a new real-time communication protocol that is fully compatible with Ethernet and provides in addition to the standard Ethernet service a deterministic real-time communication service for distributed real-time systems. This paper elaborates on basic concepts in real-time communication, elicits real-time communication requirements and discusses some innate conflicts that must be considered in any realtime protocol design. In the second part, the rationale and the principles of operation of TT-Ethernet are presented and common properties of all members of the TT-Ethernet protocol family are discussed.