The OSI-based data communication standards, and particularly the MAP-selected profile, have provided a genuine, vendor-independent communication environment, crucial to multiple computer-based control applications. One of the vital components in the Application Layer of these standards, aimed directly at supporting communications between programmable devices in manufacturing environments, is the 'Manufacturing Message Specification' (MMS). Although MMS has been acknowledged as vitally important in standardizing communications between shop-floor devices, and despite having been developed specifically for industrial environments, it does not have the capacity to support directly the time-critical services which are vital to real-time applications. Effort, therefore, needs to be expended in extending the current MMS concepts to fulfil real-time requirements. This thesis is dedicated to tackling this problem. It first analyzes the real-time requirements and the related OSI-based standards, especially MMS. Then it proposes services and functions which should be included within both the inherent OSI supporting structures and MMS itself, in order to fulfil these real-time requirements. The thesis also provides background comments on the support required from the associated computer architectures. Finally, it reviews a prototype implementation of the proposals and analyzes the results obtained. The original contribution of this work lies in the proposed extensions to the core MMS proposal - these being based on a fundamentally radical architecture, which it is suggested, is necessary to support a genuine real-time distributed computer control system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:636733 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Zhao, G. F. |
| Publisher | Swansea University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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