RTC: A Real-Time Communication Middleware on Top of RTAI-Linux

This paper describes RTC, a set of software layers based on the ISO/OSI standard that implements a complete real-time communication platform on a cluster running under realtime Linux. A modi ed TDMA protocol is implemented as Media Access Control (MAC) discipline, and at the application level the communication approach is channel-oriented. The RTC platform guarantees a bandwidth for each channel, which makes it attractive for multimedia applications, which currently is the main application considered. RTC also supports non-real-time tra c among the nodes using TCP/IP, for instance. The platform, with the exception of some parts of the non-real-time capabilities, is implemented as modules of the Linux/RTAI operating system. As underlying communication network currently SCI is used. SCI has been selected due to its low latency, low jitter and high bandwidth[5]. RTC, however has been designed to support other network technologies as well. The paper also shows performance evaluation results that demonstrate the real-time properties of RTC.