The time-triggered approach is a well-suited approach for building distributed hard real-time systems. Since many applications of transducer networks have real-time requirements, a time-triggered communication interface for smart transducers is desirable; however, such a time-triggered interface must still support features for monitoring, maintenance, plug-and-play, etc. The approach of the Object Management Group (OMG) Smart Transducer Interface consists of clusters of time-triggered smart transducer nodes that contain special interfaces supporting configuration, diagnostics, and maintenance, without affecting the deterministic real-time communication. This paper discusses the applicability of the time-triggered approach for smart transducer networks and presents a case study application of a time-triggered smart transducer network.
