Supporting model-based network specification for time-critical distributed control systems in IEC 61499

Designing the software for distributed control systems introduces new challenges regarding handling the communication between devices. The domain-specific modeling language defined in IEC 61499 provides mechanisms to distribute software across devices, but does not provide modeling elements for describing details about the communication between these devices. We provide an extensible proof-of-concept implementation for specifying the communication of an IEC 61499-based system that extends the current system model. Our approach requires only minimal adaptations of the IEC 61499 standard and proposes an extensible concept for modeling various kinds of communication protocols. We integrated the concept into an open-source development environment for IEC 61499. We then evaluated the approach and the tool by configuring time-sensitive networking for a typical control application. Engineers can customize our approach with low effort to support additional paradigms for communication using the provided extension mechanisms.