Design of a soft real-time framework for building automation, supporting local and remote I/O points

This document presents the design of a soft real-time framework for building automation, for what concerns software. The framework comprises a backbone, which consists of an Ethernet-based network connecting a number of control cards. Each control card has got a local bus that serves as an attachment point for a number of I/O cards providing digital and analog inputs and outputs. The control card hosts both the control software module mainly related to local I/O points, and the gateway software that allows other control cards to get remote access to the I/O points themselves, through the backbone. The report consists of two chapters: Chapter 1 outlines the general structure of the building automa- tion network being considered, as well as the basic design assumptions and requirements, while Chapter 2 defines the software and communication architecture of control cards.