| In recent years, the design and development of technologies for real-time systems have been investigated extensively in response to the demand for fast time-to-the-market and flexible application integration. This dissertation proposes a design approach for integrated real-time systems in which multiple real-time applications with different criticalities can be feasibly operated, while sharing computing and communication resources.; The benefits of integrated real-time systems are cost reduction in design, maintenance, and upgrades; and easy adoption of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and software components. The integrated real-time applications must meet their own timing requirements and be protected from other malfunctioning applications. To guarantee timing constraints and dependability of each application, integrated real-time systems must be equipped with strong partitioning schemes. Therefore, we name them strongly partitioned integrated real-time systems (SPIRIT).; To prove the theoretical correctness of the model and provide a scheduling analysis method, we developed a fundamental two level scheduling theory, an algorithm for integrated scheduling of partitions and communication channels, and aperiodic task scheduling methods. We also augmented the scheduling model with practical constraints, which are demanded by ARINC 653 Integrated Modular Avionics standards. The scheduling algorithms are evaluated by mathematical analysis and simulation studies, and implemented as an integrated scheduling tool suite.; To provide a software platform for integrated real-time systems, we developed a real-time kernel, SPIRIT-μKernel, which implements strong partitioning schemes based on the two-level scheduling theory. The kernel also enables a generic mechanism to host heterogeneous COTS real-time operating systems on top of the kernel. The performance of critical parts of the kernel on the prototype kernel platform is measured in the prototype environment of a PowerPC embedded controller.; Finally, we propose a real-time Ethernet named Strong Partitioning Real-Time Ethernet (SPRETHER), which is designed for the communication network of integrated real-time systems. To overcome the lack of deterministic characteristics of Ethernet, we use a software-oriented synchronization approach based on a table-driven proportional access method. We performed scheduling analysis work for SPRETHER and measured performance by experiments on a prototype network. |
