Evaluation of the real-time capability of IEEE1394 for industrial automation

Resumo

The increasing demand for bandwidth in industrial automation requires the usage of high-speed networks in this field. Besides high data rates, the network must also guarantee deterministic timing behaviour in order to support real-time applications.IEEE1394, also known as FireWire™, is a relatively new high performance serial bus system, which was originally designed to connect multimedia devices. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the real-time behaviour of IEEE1394 in respect of industrial automation by analysing data transfer times and global clock support. It will be shown that IEEE1394 provides guaranteed timing constraints, and the influence of the most essential network parameters will be examined.