Modeling Time-Triggered Ethernet in SystemC/TLM for Virtual Prototyping of Cyber-Physical Systems

When designing cyber-physical systems (CPS), virtual prototyping can discover potential design flaws at early design stages to reduce the difficulties at the integration stage. CPS are typically complex real-time distributed systems which require networks with deterministic end-to-end latency and bounded jitter. Time-triggered Ethernet (TTEthernet) integrates time-triggered and event-triggered traffic, and has been used in many CPS domains, such as automotive, aerospace, and industrial process control. In this paper, a TTEthernet model in SystemC/TLM is developed to facilitate the design and integration of CPS. The model realizes all the necessary features of TTEthernet, and can be integrated with the hardware platform model for design space exploration. We validate the model by comparing latency and jitter with those obtained using a commercial software-based implementation. We also compare our model with the TTEthernet modeled in OMNeT++ INET framework. Our model provides startup and restart services that are necessary for maintaining synchronized operations in TTEthernet. We evaluate these services and also the efficiency of the simulation.