An Engineering Approach to Hard Real-Time System Design

This paper presents a systematic methodology for the design of distributed fault tolerant real-time systems. The methodology covers the stepwise reenement of the given requirements, expressed in the form of real-time transactions, to task and protocol executions. It also includes a timing analysis and dependability evaluation of the still incomplete design. The testability of the evolving system is considered to be of essential concern. A set of coherent tools for the support of the methodology is described in some detail. The methodology assumes that the run-time architecture is based on static scheduling and a globally synchronised time-base is available to coordinate the system actions in the domain of real-time.