The Profibus Timed Token MAC Protocol for Real-Time Communications

This paper describes how to use Profibus networks to support real-time industrial communications, that is, how to ensure the transmission of real-time messages within a maximum bound time. Profibus is based on a simplified timed token protocol, which is a well-proved solution for the real-time communication systems. However, Profibus differs from the timed token protocol, thus the usual timed token protocol has to be modified in order to be applied in Profibus. In fact, the real-time solutions for networks based on the timed token protocol rely on the possibility of allocating specific bandwidth for the real-time traffic. This means that a minimum amount of time to transmit the real-time messages is always guaranteed whenever each token is arrived. In other words, with the Profibus protocol, at least, one real-time message should be transmitted per every token visit in the worst case. It is required to control medium access properly to satisfy the message deadlines. In this paper, we have presented how to obtain the optimal network parameter for the Profibus protocol. The selected network parameter is valid regardless of the behavior of asynchronous messages.