An object-oriented tool for simulating distributed real-time control systems

This paper presents an object-oriented software tool, called RTSIM, aimed at simulating real-time embedded controllers. The tool consists of a collection of C++ libraries permitting a separate specification of the functional behaviour of the controller and of the hardware/software architecture to be used for its deployment. In particular, it is possible to provide an accurate modelling of the concurrent architecture of the control tasks and of the run-time support offered by the operating system for the real-time scheduling of the shared resources (CPU, memory buffers and network links). In this way, it is possible to compare different scheduling solutions by evaluating their simulated performance directly in the domain of the control application. Moreover, the tool can be utilized to tune up design parameters such as the activation frequencies of the tasks. The application of the tool is shown in a meaningful case study. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.