Guest Editorial Special Section on Communication in Automation -Part I

This special section on "Communication in Automation" presents some relevant works concerning selected aspects about the topics highlighted above. Obviously, it cannot provide a comprehensive overview on the subject. Instead, some insight is provided about the most recent advances in this field. As a consequence, the papers included in this special section cover a quite wide spectrum of topics. The section is split over two issues of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS. In the present issue, three papers are presented, which deal with performance evaluation of control networks. In particular, they address the analysis of scheduling policies for CAN networks, performance measurements in real-time Ethernet networks, and the theoretical evaluation of CSMA-based networks such as LonTalk. Further papers will appear in the May issue of these Transactions.