Hard real-time communication solution for mechatronic systems

•High performance real-time communication solution based on the Ethernet physical layer (PHY) and on field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology.•A modification of the time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) mechanism that allows to increase the communication performance.•The use of the FPGA allows for integrating the communication solution with the user algorithm of a particular distributed device inside a single chip.

The paper proposes a method to build a highly efficient real-time communication solution for mechatronic systems. The method is based on the Ethernet physical layer (PHY) and on field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology and offers a better performance when compared to commercially available communication solutions. Although it is not directly compatible with the OSI/ISO model of TCP/IP protocol, vertical integration is done with a gateway. This provides simplicity and safety. Moreover, the use of the FPGA allows for integrating the communication solution with the user algorithm of particular distributed device inside a single chip. Therefore, the proposed solution is efficient and highly integrated.