Dynamic real-time distributed systems are characterized by significant run-time uncertainties at the mission and system levels. Typically, processing and communication latencies in such systems do not have known upper bounds and event and task arrivals and failure occurrences are non-deterministically distributed. This thesis proposes adaptive resource management heuristic techniques for periodic tasks in dynamic real-time distributed systems with the (soft real-time) objective of minimizing missed deadline ratios. The proposed resource management techniques continuously monitor the application tasks at run-time for adherence to the desired real-time requirements, detects timing failures or trends for impending failures (due to workload fluctuations), and dynamically allocate resources by replicating subtasks of application tasks for load sharing. We present "predictive" resource allocation algorithms that determine the number of subtask replicas that are required for adapting the application to a given workload situation using statistical regression theory. The algorithms use regression equations that forecast subtask timeliness as a function of external load parameters such as number of sensor reports and internal resource load parameters such as CPU utilization. The regression equations are determined off-line and on-line from application profiles that are collected off-line and on-line, respectively. To evaluate the performance of the predictive algorithms, we consider algorithms that determine the number of subtask replicas using empirically determined functions. The empirical functions compute the number of replicas as a function of the rate of change in the application workload during a "window" of past task periods. We implemented the resource management algorithms as part of a middleware infrastructure and measured the performance of the algorithms using a real-time benchmark. The experimental results indicate that the predictive, regression theory-based algorithms generally produce lower missed deadline ratios than the empirical strategies under the workload conditions that were studied. / Master of Science

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / November 04-07, 1991 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Real-time data processing of telemetry data has evolved from a highly centralized single large scale computer system to multiple mini-computers or super mini-computers tied together in a loosely coupled distributed network. Each mini-computer or super mini-computer essentially performing a single function in the real-time processing sequence of events. The reasons in the past for this evolution are many and varied. This paper will review some of the more significant factors in that evolution and will present some alternatives to a fully distributed mini-computer network that appear to offer significant real-time data processing advantages.

Les automates temporisés sont un formalisme qui permet de modéliser, vérifier, et synthétiser des systèmes temps-réels. Ils sont dotés d’une sémantique abstraite et mathé- matique, qui permet de formaliser et résoudre plusieurs problèmes de vérification et de synthèse. Cependant, les automates temporisés sont utilisés pour concevoir des modèles, plutôt que décrire des systèmes temps-réels entiers. Ainsi, une fois la phase de conception terminée, il reste à déterminer si les comportements du modèle correspondent à ceux d’un vrai système. Une étape importante de l’implémentation consiste à s’assurer de la robustesse du système. On considère une notion de robustesse sur les automates tem- porisés qui exige que les comportements soient préservés quand le modèle est sujet à des perturbations bornées. Dans cette thèse, plusieurs approches sont étudiées : Dans l’analyse de robustesse, on se demande si un automate temporisés donné préserve ses com- portements sous divers types de perturbations, et on cherche à calculer un majorant sur les perturbations tolérées. La synthèse robuste s’intéresse au calcul d’une loi de contrôle (ou une stratégie) qui guide le système, et tolère des perturbations d’une magnitude calculable. Enfin, dans l’implémentation robuste, on s’intéresse à transformer automatiquement un modèle donné pour le rendre robuste, tout en préservant ses comportements. Plusieurs modèles de perturbations sont considérés : erreurs de mesure de temps (élargissement de gardes), élimination des comportements limites (contraction de gardes), et la restriction du domaine du temps aux valeurs discrètes. On formalise également les problèmes de synthèse robuste comme des jeux entre le contrôleur et un environnement qui perturbe systèmatiquement tout délai choisi par une quantité bornée. Ces problèmes sont étudiés pour les automates temporisés, ainsi que leurs extensions- les jeux temporisés, et les automates et jeux temporisés pondérés. Plusieurs algorithmes d’analyse de robustesse parametrée contre l’élargissement de gardes et la contraction de gardes sont proposés. Deux variantes de la sémantique de jeu pour le problème de synthèse robuste sont également étudiées pour les automates temporisés et leurs extensions. Un logiciel d’analyse de robustesse contre la contraction de gardes, ainsi que des résultats expérimentaux sont présentés. Le problème de l’implémentation robuste est étudié dans deux contextes différents. Tous les algorithmes calculent également un majorant sur les perturbations que le modèle donné est capable de tolérer. / Timed automata are a formalism to model, verify, and synthesize real-time systems. They have the advantage of having an abstract mathematical semantics, which allow formalizing and solving several verification and synthesis problems. However, timed automata are intended to design models, rather than completely describe real systems. Therefore, once the design phase is over, it remains to check whether the behavior of an actual implementation corresponds to that of the timed automaton model. An important step before implementing a system design is ensuring its robustness. This thesis considers a notion of robustness that asks whether the behavior of a given timed automaton is preserved, or can be made so, when it is subject to small perturbations. Several approaches are considered: Robustness analysis seeks to decide whether a given timed automaton tolerates perturbations, and in that case to compute the (maximum) amount of tolerated perturbations. In robust synthesis, a given system needs to be controlled by a law (or strategy) which tolerates perturbations upto some computable amount. In robust implementation, one seeks to automatically transform a given timed automaton model so that it tolerates perturbations by construction. Several perturbation models are considered, ranging from introducing error in time measures (guard enlargement), forbidding behaviors that are too close to boundaries (guard shrinking), and restricting the time domain to a discrete sampling. We also formalize robust synthesis problems as games, where the control law plays against the environment which can systematically perturb the chosen moves, by some bounded amount. These problems are studied on timed automata and their variants, namely, timed games, and weighted timed automata and games. Algorithms for the parameterized robustness analysis against guard enlargements, and guard shrinkings are presented. The robust synthesis problem is studied for two variants of the game semantics, for timed automata, games, and their weighted extensions. A software tool for robustness analysis against guard shrinkings is presented, and experimental results are discussed. The robust implementation problem is also studied in two different settings. In all algorithms, an upper bound on perturbations that the given timed automaton tolerates can be computed.

This work tries to remedy the practical part of teaching development of software for real-time systems. It does so by creation of a platform on which students can practically learn aspects of development of software for real-time systems. % (feedback control, low level programming). The resulting platform consists of a plant, a visualizer and a controller. The plant represents an industrial machine, the visualizer displays the current state of the plant. The controller drives the plant. Students learn by developing a program for the controller. The resulting platform is realized as a hardware-in-the-loop simulation -- the controller's processor and devices are real hardware, and the plant is a simulated device. The platform has a low cost, low space requirements and it is not easily breakable. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Recentes pesquisas têm investigado modelos de garantia de desempenho baseados em restrições temporais, parametrizadas pela especificação de limites superiores de tempo médio de resposta. Este trabalho estende o desenvolvimento da política de escalonamento de temporeal EBS, aplicável a esse problema, apresentando um mecanismo de controle de admissão de requisições em aplicações com tais requisitos. A abordagem baseia-se em um método adaptativo capaz de administrar o nível de degradação do sistema, de forma a isolar o efeito do comportamento de um usuário sobre a qualidade de serviço oferecida aos demais usuários. Também é proposta uma modificação na implementação do algoritmo originalmente definido para a EBS, de forma a diminuir sua complexidade temporal. Resultados de simulação demonstram a efetividade dos mecanismos propostos / In recent research works performance guarantee models based on temporal constraints with specified response-time upper bounds have been investigated. This work extends the development of the EBS real-time scheduling policy, applicable to this problem, by proposing an admission control mechanism. The introduced approach is based on an adaptive model which, based on the system degradation level, tries to isolate the impact of the behavior of a given user upon the quality of service offered to the other users. Its also proposed a new algorithm to reduce the complexity order of the original EBS implementation. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of proposed methods

A Qualidade de Serviço oferece aos Sistemas de Tempo Real garantias das restrições temporais de aplicações tais como comércio eletrônico, vídeo conferência, telemedicina, entre outras que necessitam de confiabilidade e desempenho para efetivação dos seus serviços. Contribuições nessas áreas têm focado a provisão de qualidade de serviço em termos absolutos, descritos num limite máximo de média de tempo de atendimento, destinado às aplicações Web. Todavia, o controle de qualidade baseado em tempo médio de resposta durante todo o período de serviço prestado, não restringe os tempos de resposta quanto a sua dispersão. Um valor médio razoável pode ser resultado da combinação de tempos de resposta elevados e pequenos. O objetivo deste trabalho é reduzir a dispersão dos atrasos em sistemas escalonados com a política EBS (Exigency Based Scheduling ), definidos pela diferença positiva entre o tempo de resposta da requisição do usuário e o valor médio contratado, em um modelo de contrato determinado por janelas deslizantes de operações. A EBS é uma política de escalonamento que define um modelo de contratos de tempo médio de resposta avaliados durante todo o tempo de serviço. Avalia-se a dispersão dos atrasos, pois, é preferível que haja a possibilidade dos tempos de resposta ficarem substancialmente abaixo da média contratada. Os resultados são obtidos utilizando métodos de simulação dos algoritmos desenvolvidos durante o projeto / Quality of Service offers Real Time Systems guarantees the time constraints of applications such as electronic commerce, video conferencing, telemedicine, among others that need reliable and effective performance for their services. Contributions in these areas have made the provision of service quality in absolute terms, out of a maximum average time of service for Web applications. However, quality control based on average response time for the entire period of service, does not restrict the response time to their dispersion. A reasonable average value may be the result of the combination of response times of high and low. Objective of this research is reduce the delays dispersion in systems scheduled with policy EBS (Exigency Based Scheduling), defined by the positive difference between the response time of user request and the average contract value, in a model contract by a sliding operation windows. The EBS is a scheduling policy that defines a contracts model for an average response time evaluated throughout the time of service. We analyze the delays dispersion because it is preferable that there is the possibility of response time becomes substantially below the average contracted. Results are obtained using simulation methods of the algorithms developed during the project

<p>Embedded computer systems have become ubiquitous. They are used in a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from household appliances and mobile devices to vehicle controllers and medical equipment. This dissertation deals with design and verification of embedded systems, with a special emphasis on the real-time facet of such systems, where the time at which the results of the computations are produced is as important as the logical values of these results. Within the class of real-time systems two categories, namely hard real-time systems and soft real-time systems, are distinguished and studied in this thesis.</p><p>First, we propose modeling and verification techniques targeted towards hard real-time systems, where correctness, both logical and temporal, is of prime importance. A model of computation based on Petri nets is defined. The model can capture explicit timing information, allows tokens to carry data, and supports the concept of hierarchy. Also, an approach to the formal verification of systems represented in our modeling formalism is introduced, in which model checking is used to prove whether the system model satisfies its required properties expressed as temporal logic formulas. Several strategies for improving verification efficiency are presented and evaluated.</p><p>Second, we present scheduling approaches for mixed hard/soft real-time systems. We study systems that have both hard and soft real-time tasks and for which the quality of results (in the form of utilities) depends on the completion time of soft tasks. Also, we study systems for which the quality of results (in the form of rewards) depends on the amount of computation allotted to tasks. We introduce quasi-static techniques, which are able to exploit at low cost the dynamic slack caused by variations in actual execution times, for maximizing utilities/rewards and for minimizing energy.</p><p>Numerous experiments, based on synthetic benchmarks and realistic case studies, have been conducted in order to evaluate the proposed approaches. The experimental results show the merits and worthiness of the techniques introduced in this thesis and demonstrate that they are applicable on real-life examples.</p>

<p>Systems controlled by embedded computers become indispensable in our lives and can be found in avionics, automotive industry, home appliances, medicine, telecommunication industry, mecatronics, space industry, etc. Fast, accurate and flexible performance estimation tools giving feedback to the designer in every design phase are a vital part of a design process capable to produce high quality designs of such embedded systems.</p><p>In the past decade, the limitations of models considering fixed task execution times have been acknowledged for large application classes within soft real-time systems. A more realistic model considers the tasks having varying execution times with given probability distributions. No restriction has been imposed in this thesis on the particular type of these functions. Considering such a model, with specified task execution time probability distribution functions, an important performance indicator of the system is the expected deadline miss ratio of tasks or task graphs.</p><p>This thesis proposes two approaches for obtaining this indicator in an analytic way. The first is an exact one while the second approach provides an approximate solution trading accuracy for analysis speed. While the first approach can efficiently be applied to monoprocessor systems, it can handle only very small multi-processor applications because of complexity reasons. The second approach, however, can successfully handle realistic multiprocessor applications. Experiments show the efficiency of the proposed techniques.</p> / Report code: LiU-Tek-Lic-2002:58.

We present a formally specified event specification language (Solicitor). Solicitor is suitable for real-time systems, since it results in resource-predictable and efficient event monitors. In event monitoring, event expressions defined in an event specification language control the monitoring by matching incoming streams of event occurrences against the event expressions. When an event expression has a complete set of matching event occurrences, the event type that this expression defines has occurred. Each event expression is specified by combining contributing event types with event operators such as sequence, conjunction, disjunction; contributing event types may be primitive, representing happenings of interest in a system, or composite, specified by event expressions. The formal specification of Solicitor is based on a formal schema that separates two important aspects of an event expression; these aspects are event operators and event contexts. The event operators aspect addresses the relative constraints between contributing event occurrences, whereas the event contexts aspect addresses the selection of event occurrences from an event stream with respect to event occurrences that are used or invalidated during event monitoring. The formal schema also contains an abstract model of event monitoring. Given this formal specification, we present realization issues of, a time complexity study of, as well as a proof of limited resource requirements of event monitoring. We propose an architecture for resource-predictable and efficient event monitoring. In particular, this architecture meets the requirements of realtime systems by defining how event monitoring and tasks are associated. A declarative way of specifying this association is proposed within our architecture. Moreover, an efficient memory management scheme for event composition is presented. This scheme meets the requirements of event monitoring in distributed systems. This architecture has been validated by implementing an executable component prototype that is part of the DeeDS prototype. The results of the time complexity study are validated by experiments. Our experiments corroborate the theory in terms of complexity classes of event composition in different event contexts. However, the experimental platform is not representative of operational real-time systems and, thus, the constants derived from our experiments cannot be used for such systems.

Embedded computer systems have become ubiquitous. They are used in a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from household appliances and mobile devices to vehicle controllers and medical equipment. This dissertation deals with design and verification of embedded systems, with a special emphasis on the real-time facet of such systems, where the time at which the results of the computations are produced is as important as the logical values of these results. Within the class of real-time systems two categories, namely hard real-time systems and soft real-time systems, are distinguished and studied in this thesis. First, we propose modeling and verification techniques targeted towards hard real-time systems, where correctness, both logical and temporal, is of prime importance. A model of computation based on Petri nets is defined. The model can capture explicit timing information, allows tokens to carry data, and supports the concept of hierarchy. Also, an approach to the formal verification of systems represented in our modeling formalism is introduced, in which model checking is used to prove whether the system model satisfies its required properties expressed as temporal logic formulas. Several strategies for improving verification efficiency are presented and evaluated. Second, we present scheduling approaches for mixed hard/soft real-time systems. We study systems that have both hard and soft real-time tasks and for which the quality of results (in the form of utilities) depends on the completion time of soft tasks. Also, we study systems for which the quality of results (in the form of rewards) depends on the amount of computation allotted to tasks. We introduce quasi-static techniques, which are able to exploit at low cost the dynamic slack caused by variations in actual execution times, for maximizing utilities/rewards and for minimizing energy. Numerous experiments, based on synthetic benchmarks and realistic case studies, have been conducted in order to evaluate the proposed approaches. The experimental results show the merits and worthiness of the techniques introduced in this thesis and demonstrate that they are applicable on real-life examples.