Distributed Real-Time Systems

This classroom-tested textbook describes the design and implementation of software for distributed real-time systems, using a bottom-up approach. The text addresses common challenges faced in software projects involving real-time systems, and presents a novel method for simply and effectively performing all of the software engineering steps. Each chapter opens with a discussion of the core concepts, together with a review of the relevant methods and available software. This is then followed with a description of the implementation of the concepts in a sample kernel, complete with executable code.

Topics and features: introduces the fundamentals of real-time systems, including real-time architecture and distributed real-time systems; presents a focus on the real-time operating system, covering the concepts of task, memory, and input/output management; provides a detailed step-by-step construction of a real-time operating system kernel, which is then used to test various higher level implementations; describes periodic and aperiodic scheduling, resource management, and distributed scheduling; reviews the process of application design from high-level design methods to low-level details of design and implementation; surveys real-time programming languages and fault tolerance techniques; includes end-of-chapter review questions, extensive C code, numerous examples, and a case study implementing the methods in real-world applications; supplies additional material at an associated website.

Requiring only a basic background in computer architecture and operating systems, this practically-oriented work is an invaluable study aid for senior undergraduate and graduate-level students of electrical and computer engineering, and computer science. The text will also serve as a useful general reference for researchers interested in real-time systems.

Part I: Introduction. - Introduction to Real-Time Systems. - The Hardware. - Distributed Real-Time Systems. - Part II: System Software. - Real-Time Operating Systems. - Design of an Experimental Distributed Real-Time Kernel. - Distributed Real-Time Operating Systems and the Middleware. - Part III: Scheduling and Resource Sharing. - Uniprocessor Independent Task Scheduling. - Uniprocessor Dependent Task Scheduling. - Multiprocessor and Distributed Real-Time Scheduling. - Part IV: Application Design. - Software Engineering of Real-Time Systems. - Real-Time Programming Languages. - Fault Tolerance. - Case Study: Environment Monitoring by a Wireless Sensor Network. - Appendix A: Pseudocode Conventions. - Appendix B: Lower Kernel Functions.