Real-Time application are an important class of embedded systems such as driver assistance systems in modern automobiles, medical devices, process plants and aircrafts. Their main feature is that they are required to complete work and deliver services on a timely basis. This course aims at introducing fundamental theories and concepts about real-time systems. As an introduction, the lecture describes several classes of real-time applications (e.g. digital controllers, signal processing, real-time databases and multimedia). It introduces the main characteristics of real-time systems and explains the relationship between timing requirements and functional requirements. Next, this is followed by a reference model used to characterize the main features of real-time applications. Several scheduling approaches (e.g clock-driven and priority-driven) and timing analysis techniques used for the verification and validation of the timing properties of real-time systems are introduced and discussed. The last part of the course will focus on the timing behavior of communications networks taking into account properties such as the end-to-end latency and the delay jitter, and on shared resources access control and synchronization in multiprocessor/multicore architectures.

After attending the course, students will have solid notions about the basic properties of common real-time systems and the methods used to analyze them. Students will be able to characterize and model the timing features of real-time systems and use schedulability analysis techniques to compute their response times to check if this meets the timing requirements (I.e deadline) of the system.

• Introduction to Real-Time Embedded Systems
• Characterization of Real-Time Systems
• Approaches to Real-Time Scheduling
• Timing Analysis
• Real-Time Communication
• Multiprocessor/Multicore Scheduling and Synchronization
• An example of an Automotive Real-Time System

• Jane W. S. Liu. Real-Time Systems. Prentice Hall, 2000.

• Course "Technische Informatik / Computer Engineering" (mandatory)
• Course "Eingebettete Systeme / Embedded Systems" (optional)