Distributed microprocessor control systems based on the broadcast principle
R.C. Gueth, Jiri Kriz, Th. Lalive d’Epinay · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1984
A Class of advanced distributed process control systems is introduced. The presented systems are local area networks consisting of a large number of microprocessor-based computer nodes that perform control and monitoring functions. The computer nodes communicate by broadcasting state information in source-addressed messages. The potential advantages of this communication mechanism over conventional destination-addressed message passing are: no side effect of function executions, convenient monitoring of running systems, facilitation of incremental system construction and system extension while the system is in service, support of backward error tracing and the identification of fault sources. There already exist a few distributed process control systems that are based on broadcasting source-addressed messages. The technological progress in high-speed data transmission and further research in broadcast-oriented computer communication will broaden the application range of these systems.