Controlling multi-switch networks for prompt reconfiguration

Recent trends in distributed embedded systems, such as those found in avionics and trains, have shown an increase in the amount and heterogeneity of the information that needs to be exchanged, together with a growing importance of supporting dynamic reconfiguration and adaptive behaviors. In this paper we focus on Ethernet technologies with real-time reconfiguration support and we address the case of middle-size networking infrastructures with a few switches. We use the FTT-SE protocol with the needed adaptations to support dynamic heterogeneous real-time transactions in multi-hop networks. The paper presents a worst-case response-time analysis that provides timeliness guarantees, improving the results obtained with another previous analysis, decreasing the needed network capacity for guaranteed schedulability by 25% on average. Practical experiments and simulation results validate the proposed approach and analysis.