State of the art and open research topics in embedded hard real-time systems design

Abstract

The most important and necessary properties of embedded real-time systems, and the ways to achieve them, are explored. The basic and most prominent domains of real-time systems design are discussed, starting with processor and system hardware architectures, ranging over operating systems, tasking and scheduling, high level real-time programming languages, worst case execution time and schedulability analysis, to application design engineering and safety related applications. Common misconceptions, which are still strongly present in control systems design, are identified. Guidelines for consistent implementation are proposed, and sample solutions in certain areas presented. Finally, directions for future research are indicated.