Development of timing analysis tool for distributed real-time control system

There has been considerable activity in recent years in developing timing analysis algorithms for distributed real-time control systems. However, it is difficult for control engineers to analyze the timing behavior of distributed real-time control systems because the algorithms was developed in a software engineer's position and the calculation of the algorithm is very complex. Therefore, there is a need to develop a timing analysis tool, which can handle the calculation complexity of the timing analysis algorithms in order to help control engineers easily analyze or develop the distributed real-time control systems. In this paper, an interactive timing analysis tool, called RAT (Response-time Analysis Tool), is introduced. RAT can perform the schedulability analysis for development of distributed real-time control systems. The schedulability analysis can verify whether all real-time tasks and messages in a system will be completed by their deadlines in the system design phase. Furthermore, from the viewpoint of end-to-end scheduling, RAT can perform the schedulability analysis for series of tasks and messages in a precedence relationship.