The number and complexity of electronic systems is dramatically increasing. New safety-relevant features have to be implemented, which will require higher levels of safety and fault tolerance in communication. The communication in a Time-Triggered Architecture guarantees that all the electronic systems work together perfectly. This increases safety and reduces costs at the same time.

Data communication in a Time-Triggered Architecture is a time-triggered and not an event-triggered process. To explain the difference, imagine a board room:

Three people are present; everyone can speak whenever he feels like. If someone wants to say something, he has to wait until the others have stopped talking. This form of communication is called event-triggered. While this kind of communication might work with three people, it almost certainly will fail with 20 people or more.

Evidently, some sort of structure has to be introduced to make this meeting more efficient: Make a fixed order; give everybody five minutes to talk. Make sure that nobody interrupts. When everybody has talked, start from the beginning. This is called time-triggered communication and this is basically what the Time-Triggered Protocol TTP does.

Of course, TTP does this quite fast: Instead of five minutes the time for each "speaker" is only a few microseconds (a microsecond is a millionth part of a second).

To get familiar with the terminology in the area of time-triggered systems, have a look at the Easy-to-Read Glossary, which is based on the example above.

For more information about Time-Triggered Architecture, click here.

For more information about Time-Triggered Protocol, click here.