Importance

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Abstract

A system and method for monitoring and maintaining a plurality of modules are described. Each module of the plurality of modules includes at least one link slave device, and a link controller is connected to link slave devices via a plurality of individual serial, bidirectional connections. The link slave devices and the link controller include protocol logic for communication according to a bidirectional protocol. At predefined time segments and predefined periodicity, the link slave devices drive the corresponding bidirectional link to the controller to provider maintenance information to the controller. At other predefined time segments, the controller drives the bidirectional link to issue commands to the link slave devices. The link slave devices and the link controller include protocol logic for communicating according to a protocol in which all slave devices communicate to the link controller at substantially the same period of time so that the latency for collecting information from the slave devices is independent of the number of such devices.

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First Claim