Multimedia-integrated real-time control systems

Multimedia applications are becoming pervasive and are expected to be used in advanced process control systems where image data is related to higher order material qualities. The authors have analyzed real-time control applications and their needs. A necessary component to support such a distributed multimedia integrated control system is the need for network services that support both the real-time needs of control as well as the control traffic. The analysis shows that the primary network services must include support for network scheduling for multilevel priority traffic and for synchronization of remote data transmissions and stream multimedia traffic. They propose an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)-based network architecture that uses a new real-time control protocol to provide these services.<>