  The time-triggered approach is a well-suited approach for building
distributed hard real-time systems. Since many applications of transducer
networks have real-time requirements, a time-triggered communication interface
for smart transducers is desirable, however such a time-triggered interface
must still support features for monitoring, maintenance, plug-and-play, etc.
The approach of the OMG Smart Transducer Interface consists of clusters of
time-triggered smart transducer nodes that contain special interfaces
supporting configuration, diagnostics, and maintenance without affecting the
deterministic real-time communication. This paper discusses the applicability
of the time-triggered approach for smart transducer networks and presents a
case study application of a time-triggered smart transducer network.
